


Shourtney Oneshots Collection

by deptofweirdsounds



Category: Smosh
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Post-Defy Shutdown Drama, YouTube, the tags are spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 62,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26472277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deptofweirdsounds/pseuds/deptofweirdsounds
Summary: A space for shorter Shourtney fics. Mostly fluff with a hint of drama where appropriate.
Relationships: Courtney Miller/Shayne Topp
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	1. Casual, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set at and during the Defy Shutdown.  
> Language warning (as always) and mild sexual content warning but I cut out the actual smut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have previously posted this a little while ago over on the other site this fandom uses but thought I may as well put it here too. Also, shit oneshot definitely has a part 2 that I'll upload as soon as I finish editing this chapter to make the chapter notes work properly-

She didn’t have anywhere near enough medical knowledge to know what shock actually was, but this had to be it, right? The world was rushing, screaming past her ears, yet at the same time everything in front of her eyes was frozen, no one batting an eyelid as the news spread slowly through the air like a bad odour. No more months, no more time. They were done.

Courtney had no idea what actually made the noise that broke the silence, but the sound of something crashing against the floor set the world back in motion. Work was thrown aside but immediately picked back up, questions and confusion spreading from person to person as to what they were to do now. Eventually, they gave up on work, and they started going wild. They loaded things into their cars – literally, everyone’s cars – to get as much out as they could that seemed like it should be kept. Ian, for his part, sat in his office typing at his laptop, although when the alcohol started arriving and things started getting trashed, he added a can of beer to his work process.

It all fell into a blur of a memory from there, although Courtney didn’t drink anywhere near enough for it to be alcohol-related memory loss. She knew she helped some of the Games crew throw mugs at a wall, and she jumped around between beanbags with Olivia and Monica and some of the other writers. She didn’t witness, but she heard through someone who heard through someone else that the CEO’s office had been urinated in. She turned her nose up at that one a little before letting herself fall back into what had become quite the farewell part for their shitty parent company and, presumably, all their employment and the entire Smosh brand. Shayne even turned up at one point – with beer – despite having been off filming Goldbergs all day. She chose not to talk to him, though, instead causing as much chaos as they could manage with Olivia, Boze and Mari. She couldn’t think about what this actually meant while they were yelling and fucking shit up, and it was nice.

Predictably, the party died down as it approached the later evening, staff gradually peeling off to return home to families and housemates, all an employment contract short of where they had been when they left for work that morning. Courtney, for her part, made her way back to her apartment alone when the squad started leaving, pausing in the car park for a minute to test her sobriety before deciding she was okay to drive.

She was fine in the car, humming along to the radio like it was any other day and the work part of her life – quite a significant part of her life, given her recent return to singledom – wasn’t falling apart. The mass of props loaded in the back of her tiny Fiat didn’t help it seem normal, although she reasoned that it was not the first time she’d been loaded up with props to take them somewhere. Not normally her house after their parent company collapsed, but it was fine. Totally fine.

She couldn’t find it in herself to be actively upset, truthfully, instead bristling with restlessness and confusion. She took a brisk walk around her neighbourhood the second she got home despite the rapidly disappearing sun, although it was shorter than she would have liked, owing to her reluctance to be out alone in the dark. Plus, it wasn’t exactly helping burn off the energy buzzing through her like she had hoped it would.

She opened her journal after returning to her apartment in some attempt to write and process the day’s events out of her mind onto paper, but the words didn’t come. She fell into a pattern: staring at the page for a minute, picking up her pen and twirling it around over the page as if about to write something, and then throwing it back down on the table without pressing the nib to the paper before she stood up and paced a circle around her living room, only to then return to her seat and repeat.

Her text tone snapped her out of it after about the fifth repetition, and she swore at it under her breath as she took long strides across the room to grab it from where it rested on her dining table. It went off again as she picked it up, swiping across the screen to open the two messages she now had sitting there from Shayne.

“What the fuckkkkkkkkkkk,” the first one read, straight to the point, and it made her snort-laugh for no apparent reason.

“Can I come over or whatever? Too much energy wtf,” his second text read.

“Yeah sure same whatever,” she tapped out her reply quickly without a second thought, not entirely sure it conveyed a coherent message. It must have been enough for him to interpret, though, because thirty minutes later she answered her doorbell to see him standing there with, inexplicably, a box of pizza in one hand.

“I realised I haven’t eaten since like this morning on my way over so… I got pizza?” he explains, with an uncertain shrug, as he steps past her into the apartment and makes himself comfortable at her dining table while she locks the door behind him. She follows him to the dining table, of course, taking a slice of his pizza before he has a chance to offer and shoving it in her mouth. They don’t speak while they eat.

“Thanks for the pizza asshole,” she tells him, once they’ve finished it, emphasising her statement with a burp that makes him laugh out loud before standing and wandering over to her bathroom.

She takes his brief absence as an opportunity to shift onto her living room couch, although she can’t stop shifting around and she reaches for a random stress ball sitting on her coffee table to fiddle with while she waits for him to wander back out.

“What the actual fuck though,” he repeats the message he’d sent her earlier, as he sits down on the couch just beside her and reaches over to grab both her hands in an attempt to steal her stress ball.

“It’s such a what the fuck that I can’t even think about it,” she replies, trying to prise the ball back away from his hands, although attempting to do so without her own hands leaving his grip. It’s not particularly effective.

“I don’t want to think about it but I’m so wired I don’t know what else to do,” he replies, veering slightly more serious as he lets go of both her hands and the stress ball. She lets the stress ball fall away from them onto the couch, frowning and glancing around for a moment. She reinstates their contact before she speaks, throwing her legs sideways over his lap. He doesn’t seem to mind, one arm wrapping around her shoulders as the other hand comes to rest on her thigh and begins tapping erratic patterns against it.

“I don’t even think I want to talk about it, dude, I think I need time before I can even try and process the whole fucking thing and what happens now,” she replies, and he merely nods in understanding and agreement before they fall into a comfortable silence. Her thoughts don’t drift to what had happened directly, although she runs through her mind all the people she’ll miss spending every day with at the office. Shayne, included.

“We don’t have employment contracts anymore,” she muses, breaking the silence a good while later, catching hold of one particular thought as it crosses her mind.

“We don’t. Why do you say that?” he replies, an edge of something she can’t quite place – hesitation? Nerves? – to his tone.

“Because no contract means no guidelines about how we interact with each other,” she starts, lightly, “and by that I mean no rules about how we deal with the sexual tension.”

She has her continuing state of mild shock over the whole situation to thank for giving her the emotional capacity to say it casually, as if it’s not something they’ve avoiding addressing for all of the three years they’ve known each other.

“That’s very true,” he nods, in response, fingers stilling against her thigh into a pointed grip as she looks up to find his eyes studying her face. His usual teasing glint is gone, instead replaced with a burning intensity she has only seen before when they have got a little too close to letting something go in the physical sense. His gaze draws her closer, and she loops her arms around his neck as she hovers her face inches from his before another thought makes her draw back slightly.

“You don’t do casual sex though, do you?” She queries, and he shakes his head, although his arms shift around her back and hold her tightly as he does.

“I don’t do casual sex with strangers. But you aren’t a stranger,” he explains, taking an obvious deep breath before continuing, “can I kiss you?”

She doesn’t respond vocally, but she leans forward again and he takes it as the approval to let their lips press together for the first time outside of their professional work environment. It’s messy, honestly, each of them pushing for increased intensity and missing each other’s cues as they do so. It causes her to briefly break the kiss to laugh, his own grin reappearing for a moment before they fall back together into a much more coordinated kiss.

He presses against her both literally and metaphorically as their kiss deepens and continues. She lets his movement push her back and shift them around so she is lying back on the couch, his weight pressing down against her with a heat equally matched by his tongue pressing into her mouth. She relishes in the feeling, one hand scratching repetitively and erratically across his back to pull him closer as the other slides pointedly into his back pocket and squeezes.

“I knew you liked my ass,” he jokes loosely when they break for air, and she laughs.

“Of course I do, idiot, your ass is great,” she tells him, her statement followed by a mild yelp she would heavily judge herself for in any other circumstance as he somehow makes rolling off her, standing up and picking her up flow as a single fluid movement.

“Bedroom?” he asks.

“You’re the one carrying me,” she retorts, but she nods, knowing he was in truth asking for consent more so than a plan.

She pulls him down on top of her again as soon as he places her down on her bed, and their lips meet in another deep kiss. She lets her hands wander until he gets the message and removes his shirt. And, shortly after, hers.

“How much did you drink back at the office?” he asks, when he pulls back some time later to give her more space to remove his pants.

“Only a couple drinks. I’m totally sober at this point, dude, and I probably was hours ago too,” she answers, reading between the lines, and he nods in acceptance before continuing to remove their clothing.

“You got condoms somewhere? Because I didn’t exactly come here for this and did not bring any,” he muses, still pulled back from her slightly, and she laughs.

“What, you didn’t expect me to proposition you? Why not? This is totally normal. But yeah, top drawer,” she gestures to one of her bedside tables and he moves over to grab one out of the drawer and place it on top of the covers. She removes her own bra as he does, laughing when he glances back and his gaze immediately locks on her chest.

“You can touch, you know. I encourage you to, actually,” she teases, and he smiles at her in response with intense eyes as he returns to pressing his weight over her and does just that.

“Jesus Christ you’re hot,” he murmurs, between increasingly disorganised kisses as their underwear is finally removed some further expanse of wandering hands and mouths later, “I mean, I know I usually joke about you but – fuck, you’re just insanely hot, Court.”

“Could say the same for you, Shayne,” she responds, a lightness to her voice as she guides their activities to advance.

“Not going anywhere,” he reassures her, with a glance back at where she is lying when she frowns as he quickly moves off her after they finish. True to his word, he immediately returns to her side, although he pulls the cover out as she does to allow them to climb under. He settles behind her, arms wrapped comfortably around her waist.

She wakes the next morning to a particularly obvious pressure against her backside. She isn’t complaining, of course, and she grinds back against him intentionally for a second before twisting around to face him as he groans lightly, eyes snapping open.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, seeming to realise the situation as he looks at her, but she shakes her head.

“Oh, don’t apologise. You want some help with that?” she grins, and it seems to cause him to wake up more definitively as he shrugs, gives her an almost-embarrassed smile and nods, before she does just that.

“I guess we don’t have to go anywhere today, right?” he confirms, his fingers running along and between her ribs some minutes later.

“Nope, why?” she turns the question back on him.

“Can I go down on you?” he asks, matter of factly. She agrees without hesitation, and it sets them up for a day of hot but relaxed hookups, jumping between positions and techniques as they see fit.

It doesn’t take long to become a pattern of sorts. He leaves her house reluctantly that afternoon, and they next see each other when they all convene at Ian’s house to plan a schedule of privately shooting content for the channels they have recently regained access to a few days later. The renewed enthusiasm about Smosh surviving is encouraging – maybe this whole thing isn’t over after all – and everything feels so _normal_. Even between them, although Courtney notices and files away her thought when she first sees him that he is somehow even more attractive than he was before they slept together a few days earlier.

It guides her to text him ten minutes after she gets home that evening. It’s a blatant booty call - “Come over? 😉“ - but he responds in kind, an immediate text of ‘yes’ followed by his appearance at her door 20 minutes later. 

They skip the pretence, and he immediately pulls her into a firm kiss that sets them on a path to their second - or should she call it third? - time sleeping together. He doesn’t stay over this time, because they need to be at Ian’s house early the following morning to film a video about invading said house, and their friends would comment if they arrived together.

“You don’t want them to know we’re fucking?” Courtney jokes, when he makes that comment, and he tilts his head to the side in hesitation for a moment before his usual grin returns.

“I don’t want them to make fun of us for it,” he laughs, not really answering her question, but she lets it slide and watches as he hesitates again before stepping out the door. She wants him to kiss her goodbye, but that doesn’t make sense when this is just a casual thing, so she stands back and watches him leave.

She flirts with him when they’re filming the following day, she really can’t put it any other way. She makes a point of staying near him, doing silly things to get his attention, letting her hands land on him whenever she can. He returns the gesture, though, sticking closer to her side than he usually would, and letting his own hands settle on her at every opportunity he can.

“How do I zoom in?” he asks her, camera pointed at her sitting up on a ledge above Ian’s staircase while the others mess around with some Christmas lights off to one side.

“You tap the-“ she starts to explain, before noticing his grin and realising he’s just setting up for some kind of joke.

“Oh, I’d- I tap that?” he comments, evidently zooming in on her as he does, and she reaches her hand out of the now zoomed-in frame to stick her finger up at him in response.

No one comments on anything different between them, though, so it’s fine.

He texts her first the next time, the day after they film a mukbang of sorts in her tiny car, asking if he can come over. He’s not quite as explicit about it as she was, and they have dinner and joke around for a while first, but he pulls her onto his lap with a question in his eyes the second they sit down on the couch later in the evening. She says a silent yes, of course, letting him pull her close and crash his lips against hers. They have to film next day – at her Dad’s house, of all places – but they collapse into sleep after they finish, still on top of each other, late in the night.

“Oops,” he laughs, when they wake up tangled together the following morning, “I don’t have time to go via mine, do we just turn up together?”

“May as well. If anyone asks, I picked you up on the way to be enviro friendly carpooling or somefuck,” she answers with a shrug, and he nods. It takes everything in them to shower separately and get dressed without touching each other, but they do, turning up to work – well, her Dad’s – for the shoot with five minutes to spare before they need to be there. No one asks about them arriving together, and she isn’t on camera a whole lot at all, so she lets her eyes settle shamelessly on him for most of the day.

It happens another three times over the next two weeks, usually after a shoot day. They alternate who texts first, but it always ends much the same way, tangled together naked in her bed. They tend to fall asleep not long after they finish, not progressing particularly far into the pillow talk area, until he makes a significant exception almost a month into their arrangement, however unspoken it is. She lets her lips graze a rough kiss of sorts against his shoulder after they’re under the covers, post-sex, but he pulls away and turns to face her when she does.

“What are we doing?” he asks, a tenseness to his tone that she doesn’t quite expect. Given the timing, though, she guesses her kiss was interpreted a little too romantically, so she shrugs and forces what she hopes is a casual, reassuring smile.

“We’re just fucking, right? Just a casual friends with benefits thing,” she offers.

“Right,” he answers, seeming to grimace for a moment before he shifts around to settle into their usual overnight cuddling position, arms settling around her waist.

Courtney tries not to think anything of it – she knows that’s all he wants from her. That’s fine, and she cleared it up, and he wouldn’t have cuddled up to her if her comment hadn’t made that clear.


	2. Casual, Part 2: Not-So-Casual

He says no to her advances for the first time when she next texts him three days later, saying he’s busy. She accepts it – it was a Goldbergs shoot day and she guesses it’s running overtime – but she still frowns. They hadn’t had a shoot since the day before they last slept together, and three days had become a significant gap for them. She kind of missed being around him.

They have a silly shoot the next day, invading his apartment this time after doing the same to Ian had gone so well. She tries to find a way to simply stay back after everyone else leaves and end up in his bed for a change, but Ian asks her to help plan some things back at his place with Keith and Noah, so she can’t.

She texts him again when she finally gets home, but he doesn’t reply until he sends through an apology and an excuse about his phone dying and his charger breaking the following morning. It’s a bad excuse, but she can’t reason why he’d lie to get out of hooking up – until it too starts becoming a pattern.

They’re normal enough around their friends and while they’re shooting – thank God, because she doesn’t exactly want anyone asking questions – but whenever she tries to get him alone, even just to hang out, he has some kind of excuse. They’re all valid excuses in and of themselves: he’s busy with Goldbergs, he’s already with Damien, he’s tired from the gym, he has to call his family. In combination, though, it starts to feel a little bit like he’s avoiding her.

By a month into said avoidance – over two months since they first hooked up – it’s clear he’s doing it intentionally, and she’s upset and angry and she would be two breaths away from confronting him about it if she could manage to get his attention on her for long enough to let her do so.

By some twist of fate, they’re all filming at her apartment the day after he rejects her for the 8th time straight. They’re filming an apartment invasion video much like they had for him and Ian’s places, and she puts on her camera face as soon as they all arrive, before they even start shooting. She ignores him right back as much as she can when they do start filming, instead letting herself bounce off Olivia’s rifling through her stuff and throwing out comments of self-defence when Ian and Damien get judgey about some of the weirder things they find stashed around her place.

Olivia is the first to step into her bedroom, but she’d told them it wasn’t off limits in the slightest so the others quickly follow, standing aside to watch as Olivia falls messily back onto her bed as if she definitely hadn’t been in it before when they were hanging out.

“Your bed is so comfortable Courtney – guys, you gotta try this out, Shayne, come on,” she encourages him, and Courtney forces a laugh as she glances to the side, abruptly quietening when she sees him hesitating with arms crossed at the end of the bed. She knows their friends are there. She knows Ian is literally filming the two of them. Still, something about his expression causes something to snap in her mind and she can’t stop her tone from darkening.

“Good luck with that, I’ve been trying for weeks and I still can’t get him back in my bed again,” she tells Olivia, in theory, although her eyes remain fixed almost angrily on him. She realises what she’s done when she glances back away from him to see Ian raising an eyebrow from behind the camera.

“Nope, too strong, no one is going to push me on that bed,” he comes to her aid as he often does, flexing to emphasise his forced joke about his physique and subtly gesturing out of frame for Damien to walk over and shove him onto the bed. Everyone laughs, except her, and she steps away from the camera to give herself a moment to process before she puts on her camera face again and falls back into the video, refusing to look at him lying back on her bed with Olivia and Damien.

She hopes her outburst will keep him back after they finish, even if just to yell at her for effectively revealing their arrangement – or, she guesses, past arrangement – to their friends, on a video, no less. At least then she’d be able to talk to him. He goes to leave with the others, though, and she feels powerless to stop him until she watches Damien reach out and grip his arm with as much strength as she’s ever seen him use, stopping him from following Olivia and Ian out the door.

“No, Shayne, you’re not going anywhere,” Damien tells him with some force, shifting in front of the doorway as it closes behind the others to block it as Shayne stands facing him, arms crossed defensively.

“Why?” Shayne’s voice is accusatory, sharp, but it doesn’t seem to faze his best friend.

“Because you two need to fucking talk,” Damien pushes, glancing back over Shayne’s shoulder to meet Courtney’s eyes. She shivers in response, from where she is awkwardly standing a few steps behind Shayne halfway into her living room.

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” Shayne rebuts, but Damien laughs darkly, reaching forward and forcibly turning him around to face her. His gaze is reluctant when he meets her eyes but speckled with annoyance and anger, and she hopes the anxiety suddenly spreading through her veins doesn’t show in her own eyes.

“Courtney literally outed you two sleeping together to all of us in the middle of a video because, I can only guess, she knows you’re ignoring her over it and she’s angry. Of course you need to talk,” Damien pushes, and Courtney shrugs before nodding in agreement.

“He told you?” she looks over to Damien, who also shrugs in response, back still pressed against the door as if prepared for Shayne to try and run.

“Only a couple days ago. He told me a lot of things, actually, that I might be tempted to pass on to you if he won’t-“

“Don’t you FUCKING DARE,” Shayne cuts him off, voice raising as he spins back around to face Damien, raw anger flooding into his voice. Damien doesn’t flinch, though, instead meeting his gaze with clear impatience. “I fucking told you that shit in confidence, Damien, what are you fucking doing? Can I not fucking trust you to keep things quiet when I fucking ask you to?”

“Shayne-“ Courtney takes Damien’s silence in response to his tirade as an opportunity to step forward and reach for his hand, wanting to pull him over to sit on her couch. He flinches away from her, though, and she can’t stop the hurt that she knows flashes over her face in response, even when he glances back to her momentarily before turning back to look at Damien. “What are you avoiding me for, Shayne? Why can’t I touch you? Why won’t you even talk to me? If you just wanted to quit sleeping together or something you could just tell me, we can just hang out, but can you just talk to me?”

He doesn’t give a response in the slightest, remaining silent and staring down at her floor. The three of them stand still in tense silence for a full five minutes, before she breaks it with a loud and clearly upset sigh as she turns on her heel and goes to sit down onto her sofa, still facing towards where the two men are standing at her door.

“I swear to god, Shayne-“ Damien breaks the silence once she is sitting again, and she watches him visibly tense in response.

“Fucking what, Damien? You want to ruin my two closest friendships, do you? And yes, that includes ours,” Shayne spits back at him, Damien raising an eyebrow.

“You know I don’t want to piss you off and I don’t want to have to spill your secrets for you, and the obvious solution to that is that you need to do it yourself,” he pushes Shayne to speak, again, his voice calm and level.

“You know what? Fucking fine, since apparently you’re so desperate for me to fuck my life up even more-“ Shayne lets out an angry sigh as he turns on his heel, gaze locking intensely on Courtney, although his voice is shaky underneath the intensity as he starts speaking again. “I’m avoiding you because it fucking killed me for you to say we were just friends with benefits, because I know that’s true, but I’m fucking in love with you and as much as sleeping with you was _fun_ , I love you so much more than that and I couldn’t keep doing that to myself when I know all you want from me is sex.”

“Shayne…” she says his name softly, her own mind racing as she gestures him over towards her. He doesn’t move, though, and she sighs, before speaking again. “Damien, you can go now. Shayne, please come over here.”

He doesn’t respond verbally, but he sighs and walks purposefully over to sit on the couch – some distance further away from her than he usually would – and bury his head in his hands. She watches Damien silently slip out the door and close it behind him before she turns back to see Shayne’s shoulders shaking gently with silent tears. She can’t stop herself from reaching over and wrapping her arms around him, and it makes him tense for a noticeable moment before he seems to force himself to relax and settle against her.

“You know why Damien was so pissed you wouldn’t tell me?” she asks, softly, rhetorically, immediately continuing, “because he’s known for a few months that I’m in love with you, too. And I know I said friends with benefits – I thought you were reacting to me getting a little too touchy with the post-hookup kissing. I thought I was just an easy fuck and I didn’t want to scare you off by showing how much I love you.”

“You… really?” he speaks finally, a moment later, unfolding himself to sit up properly and meet her eyes, seeming to let himself press even closer against her in response despite the fact his movement shifts her arm from around his shoulders. “You love me?”

“Course I do, Shayne. You’re kind of everything to me, I just always thought it was… just me,” she admits, watching his eyes shift from confusion to comfort to care.

“You know I’d never think of anyone as just an easy fuck, much less you, right? I mean, I didn’t lie, you’re insanely attractive and I was so onboard with getting to be intimate with you but you’re just… you’re such an amazing person, you’re attentive and caring but strong and driven, you’re always looking forward and trying to better yourself and the world around you, you make me laugh so much more than anyone else…” he trails off, before quickly adding, “I just, I love you. I really do.”

“Can you promise not to avoid me next time something difficult comes up, please? Can you say you’ll actually talk to me?” she requests.

“Yeah, okay,” he sighs softly, cautiously shifting his arm around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Court. I just… you mean so much to me. I’d prefer to just be friends with you than for things to be awkward and uncomfortable if you hadn’t felt the same. And I just… yeah.”

“You mean a lot to me, too, baby,” she tells him softly, and the pet name is truly an accident, but she sees his eyes sparkle in response and it makes her smile, too. “We’re not just friends with benefits. And we’re not friends now either, are we? We’re… well, would you like to be together?”

“Yeah. I’m yours,” he answers, decidedly, his hold around her shifting from cautious to tight as he lets his hand grip her shoulder.

“You want to stay over tonight, and not sleep together, and just cuddle?” she asks him in response, and he merely nods, head falling to the side to lean against hers.

“I need to text Damien and apologise,” he breaks the comfortable silence they fall into a minute later, and she nods, reluctantly letting go of him as she wanders over to grab his phone from where it had been roughly placed on her sideboard, sitting back down beside him and watching as he types a message.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Damien. You were right, we needed to talk and I needed to grow the fuck up and deal with it like an adult. Court told me you already knew how it would turn out so I don’t need to tell you, but… Thank you for pushing me. I owe you dinner next time we catch up,” he types out, not surprised when Damien’s reply comes through almost immediately, as if he’d been waiting to hear from one of them.

“Thanks, buddy, but I’m just glad it’s worked out. Go enjoy your night with her.”

Courtney considers asking Shayne if he wants to go out somewhere for dinner - make it feel more like a date, and all - but she turns to takeaway instead, buying his favourite on ubereats and settling back down into the couch beside him while they wait for it to arrive. She almost wants to be self-conscious of how cheesy they’re being - effectively all they’ve done for the last hour is hold each other, kiss a little bit and pile compliments and verbal affection on each other - but she can’t find it in herself to have a problem with it, given how full her heart feels.

“What are we going to do about the others?” Shayne asks her gently, as they wait for their food, “I’m not mad at you for saying something, I get that you were frustrated with me. But I think they picked up what you meant.”

“Even if they didn’t, I mean... if we’re dating, that maybe would be something I’d want to tell them anyway. And we might need to talk to Ian about what that means for any future employment contracts,” she muses, Shayne nodding in agreement.

It’s almost odd for them to climb into bed together with clothes on, but she can’t complain in the slightest when they relax into a comfortable mess of tangled limbs, the comforting contact of him what she needs to fall into a better sleep than she’s had for some time. She wakes peacefully, too, face buried against his chest and his body curled protectively around her. He presses his lips ever so slightly against the top of her head as she wakes up, and she smiles softly as she presses impossibly closer to him in response, running her fingers gently across his back for a moment to signal her awareness.

They eventually have to let go of each other, though, because they have another shoot/meeting combo day - at Ian’s again - and Shayne needs to go via his place so he doesn’t inadvertently turn up in the same clothes two days in a row. The two of them travel together, however, Courtney sliding into his passenger seat instead of taking out her own car keys and sitting back on his living room couch as he quickly gets ready.

There’s no attempt at hiding in sight when they arrive at Ian’s and knock on his front door. They’re pressed against each other’s sides with arms wrapped around each other - his around her shoulders, hers at his waist - and Ian grins widely at them when he answers the door and steps aside to let them in.

“So, how long after your contracts were over did it take for something to happen between you two?” He asks, as they enter the dining area that has become their meeting room of sorts, Damien and Liv already sitting up at the table. Courtney flicks her eyes over to meet Shayne’s before she answers, although they’d already confirmed what they were happy to share.

“A few hours,” she admits, the others laughing in response, “but that was just hooking up. Actually getting together in the dating sense just happened yesterday.”

“Wait, you guys have been sleeping together for two months?” Olivia asks, mildly shocked.

“Not exactly,” Shayne takes the answer, “we were for about a month, but then we openly said that it was just a friends with benefits thing and I freaked out and did the immature thing and started avoiding her instead of admitting I’m in love with her. Until Damien basically forced me to admit it last night.”

“Yeah you two doing friends with benefits seems like a bad idea since we all know there’s feelings there,” Ian teases, the others nodding in agreement.

“Well, we both thought it was one-sided but- it’s all good now. Thanks, Damien,” Courtney smiles, and Damien nods.

“I feel kind of bad for forcing you into it but at the same time - I got an unplanned confession from Court a few months back, it just kind of came up at one point. So when Shayne told me everything that was going on at the moment the other day it was kind of... You two really needed to talk,” Damien explains, the couple both nodding in agreement.

“I fully admit I was being an idiot by avoiding Court, she was trying to talk to me,” Shayne nods, as they reluctantly pull apart to take a seat each at the table, although he glances affectionately at her before he continues, “but it’s all okay now. It’s all... really good, actually.”

“Really good,” she confirms, meeting his eyes with just as much love as she reaches out to take his hand between their seats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moral of course being: just TALK about things!!
> 
> I get annoyed at my own characters for doing the things I wrote them doing sigh


	3. The Rule

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set at Mythical. Very overdramatic, very unrealistic, but what's fiction for, hey?
> 
> (Posted on wattpad a few days back but I lost track of what I was doing and forgot to put it here too!)

“Give us ya phone, Courtney!” Ian calls, laughing as he grabs said phone from beside her, where she had left it sitting on the break room table to eat her lunch on a Thursday afternoon. She launches at him to resist, heart jumping into her throat and her playful attitude disappearing as his eyes glance down to her screen.

“Dude, give it back,” she tells him, voice betraying her fear.

“Who’s this?” Ian pries, eyebrow raised as he taps his thumb against the most recent notification.

“Ian, come on, no snooping in my messages,” Courtney tries to reason with him, although she knows it’s less snooping and more the fact that the contact name and message contents are openly visible on her home screen.

“See me in my office,” he answers her, voice turning darker as he slides the phone back onto the table in front of her. She’d usually love the particular message sitting on the screen staring back at her, but this time it almost feels like it’s taunting her.

At least she hadn’t given him a cutesy contact name – it was still just ‘Shayne’.

The message, though…

She reaches for her phone when she realises Damien and Olivia are staring at it and her and can probably see the message too.

“ _Hey baby, you coming to mine tonight? Also, promise I didn’t forget. Happy 6 months_ _😉 <3 <3_”

“What just happened?” Olivia breaks the silence, after Courtney has flipped the phone into her lap to hide it from everyone else.

“Someone just got found out,” Damien supplies, his own voice tense, and Courtney sighs.

“I know. This just… everything just got fucked up,” she grumbles, although she finds confusion in Olivia’s eyes and judgment in Damien’s.

“Wait, that wasn’t a joke text? You and Shayne…” Olivia trails off.

“Have been dating for 6 months without telling _any of us_?” Damien finishes her sentence. Courtney nods, reluctantly.

“I… I know. It looks bad, I know. We wanted to tell both of you, but because of the… rules here, and whatever, we kind of thought… the less people that know the better. So no one does. Well, no one did. Guess that’s fucked now, I wonder if both of us will be fired or just me,” she mutters, abruptly standing up from her chair and leaving the room before either of the others can reply. She types out a brief text to Shayne as she makes her way to Ian’s office.

“ _Yes, but Ian saw that message, so…_ ”

“So, both of you have been in breach of that rule for six months?” Ian confirms, the second she steps into his office, not meeting her yes.

“I… guess,” she replies, not moving particularly far past the door. His demeanour isn’t exactly inviting.

“Technically you should both be fired on the spot for such an egregious breach,” he tells her, finally meeting her eyes, and she silently nods, waiting for him to continue, “but I’m prepared to… try something else.”

“Something else?” she prompts, when he doesn’t continue immediately.

“I can’t promise anything. I need to talk to the bosses that bought us out and see if they think we can budge – you’re lucky this didn’t happen at Defy, they wouldn’t have moved an inch – but if you can _stop_ breaching the rule, and that means break up and quit anything at all between the two of you whatever the hell it is, then I might be able to save both your jobs,” he tells her. Courtney nods, slowly, before stepping out of the room when he motions for her to do so. She sits in some state of almost shock at her desk, watching as he walks decisively out of his office and across the room towards Mythical’s side of the building.

She snaps out of her daze when Damien taps her on the shoulder and motions for her to follow him down the hallway to a random private meeting room they don’t use very often, closing the door behind them as she collapses onto one of the chairs at the table inside.

“I’m-“ she starts to speak, but he raises a hand to stop her.

“I’m… not angry,” Damien starts, although his voice isn’t positive, “I’m a little angry with Shayne that he hasn’t told me, actually. Six months? You’ve been together for that long? What happens now?”

“Yeah. Six months today. And what happens now is… either we stay together and both definitely get fired, or break up and maybe we don’t. So I guess…” Courtney trails off, roughly wiping her palm at her eyes. She isn’t going to goddamn cry. “I guess we’re breaking up then.”

“How serious is this… relationship?” Damien asks, his voice seeming to relax slightly as he does.

“I mean…” Courtney sighs, reluctantly meeting Damien’s eyes, no longer able to fight back her tears, “we were just messing around for a while. But… we finally admitted we’re kinda head over heels in love with each other a couple months ago. It’s been quite a lot since then.”

“And you still think you’re just going to break up and it’s going to go back to how it was before you got together?” Damien pushes her, and she shrugs.

“I don’t know. But I don’t know what else to do. It’s my fault, and I can’t make him lose this job over it, and I don’t want to lose my job, but…”

“What if you lose him?”

She doesn’t respond verbally to that, but she figures her crying is enough of a response. Damien seems to relent on his questioning, reaching out to pull her out of the chair and into a loose hug.

“You need to talk to him before you decide what happens. I’m sorry you’re in this situation, I know it’s impossible,” Damien tells her, and she nods as she steps back away from him to go to the bathroom and clean up her face. At least the day is almost over, and they aren’t filming anything else this week.

\----------------------------------------

“What?” Shayne asks her, voice cracking in disbelief and distress when she explains the ultimatum Ian had given them, standing awkwardly in his living room after work.

“Yeah,” she sighs, looking up at the ceiling, “I think… we need to break up. These jobs are so much and I just…”

“If that’s what you want to do…” he trails off, and she doesn’t miss the disappointment in his voice, although she doesn’t dare meet his eyes again.

“What other choice do we have, Shayne?” she regrets saying his name almost immediately, but she pushes on, “I’m not going to be responsible for you losing this job. Or the chaos it would cause at the company and the shit it would cause amongst fans. I know this is my fault, but it’s just what’s gotta happen. So… yeah. I guess it’s over and I guess I’m going to go home. We’ll both have to talk to Ian in the morning, though.”

“Oh… okay,” he answers, slowly, not offering up anything else before she turns and leaves his house to return to her own apartment, alone.

They arrive soon after each other at work the next morning, and they don’t acknowledge each other, but they immediately walk through to Ian’s office, Shayne on step behind her. Ian quickly waves them off, however.

“I’m still working on it. See me after we finish this afternoon. Like, 4,” he tells them, and they both nod, returning silently to their desks for a day of awkward, silent work.

“No more rule breaches. Are you still firing both of us?” Courtney asks Ian, straight to the point, Shayne standing silently to her side and eyeing their boss uneasily when they return to his office just after 4pm, as requested.

“Not firing if you’re compliant now. And well, that’s all well and good, but we have contracts, they have terms, and no inter-cast relationships has always been communicated as a very clear one of those,” Ian speaks sternly, “you’re lucky you both weren’t fired on the spot, you’ve given me a hell of a job trying to defend you staying here when you unapologetically admitted you’ve been breaching your damn contracts for months. You can each keep your jobs for now, but. What now?”

“We’ve broken up, Ian. It’s whatever,” Courtney snaps, “we’ve done what you asked. Can I go now?”

“Yes, you can go,” Ian sighs, “I know I’ve been stern, but you’ve gotta understand what position you put me in. I’m sure we’ll all go back to normal on Monday.”

Against his best judgment, Shayne follows her out of the building, hands stuffed in his own pockets and looking down in silence. She’s stalking ahead of him but his gait falls in time with hers almost automatically, as it has become prone to do so, and it causes him to almost crash into her when she abruptly stops in the middle of the parking lot.

He mumbles half an apology as he goes to step back and around her, but his progress is stopped when he feels her eyes on him. He can’t help but look up and meet them. She just looks angry.

“Well. I guess this is it,” she says, darkly, letting out half a laugh. It shoots through the numbness in his mind in a way he doesn’t expect and suddenly he’s angry. Angry at her, too.

“That’s fucking it, Courtney?” He snaps, barely noticing her take a shocked step back away from him. His fire doesn’t last long, falling back into the tears pressing against his eyes. “That’s it? Nothing? What happened to being in love with each other? I _know_ I love you more than this damn job, you don’t get to make that decision for me, just for yourself. But does us not mean that much to you, do you not really feel the same way? Do I not mean anything to you?” his tone turns vulnerable, and he hates it.

“You know that’s not it,” she mutters forcefully, “this job means a whole lot to both of us and I’m not jeopardising your career or mine. And I know I can’t be just friends with you anymore. So, yeah, this is it.”

She turns on her heel then, walking towards her car with her head down. He doesn’t see the tears springing to her eyes, just her back turned as she walks away from him.

He isn’t quite sure how he gets home, but he must get in his car and drive there because he does, somehow, end up broken and comatose on his own couch. He goes to bed at some point, and he stays there for all of Saturday. He starts to think on Sunday morning, though. He tries not to think about the last six months, about the stupid blissful hole they dug themselves into by acknowledging their drunk hookup and the feelings behind it instead of pretending it never happened. He does think about the future, about what they could have been, what his life could have been. He thinks about what work is going to look like now, how Pit and Games is going to become an act as much as Main is already. About how he doesn’t even know if he can act like anything is okay now his heart has been ripped out of his chest and trampled on by some combination of his once dream job and the love of his life.

He pulls up the actual employment contract he signed when they moved to Mythical, mid-afternoon on Sunday, skimming past the section he breached to the section on termination and resignation, his decision suddenly firm.

\----------------------------------------

He turns up at work early on Monday, and she’s already there. She glances up when he takes his seat beside her, but quickly looks back, blank eyes staring at the screen in front of her.

“Can we talk somewhere?” He asks, but she blanks him, not acknowledging. “Please, Courtney?”

She flinches when he says her name, but she still doesn’t answer.

“Will I just talk at you here where anyone can overhear us, then?” He pushes, and she finally glances over to meet his eyes.

“What?” Her voice is as blank as her eyes, but he can tell she’s been crying. It hurts his heart as much as it gives him the drive to keep talking.

“You know what Courtney? You’re right. We can’t be friends - and if we can’t be friends and we can’t be more, then I can’t work with you. I can’t do this. You’re the love of my life and you said you feel the same but you won’t even fight for us. And that’s… fine, that’s your choice, but I want to fight for us, I want to at least try, because either way if we don’t have any kind of relationship at all then I’m not sticking around here,” he knows there are tears streaming down his face now and half their very open plan office space is staring at him while the other half listens in and pretends they aren’t, but he’s too done to care. “I’m giving Ian an ultimatum. I want to fight for us. I want to be with you, I want to be openly with you, and I think we can do that while working here. But if you don’t want to fight for us or he doesn’t accept it - I’m out of here. This is my 2 weeks’ notice, I’m going to give it to him right now.”

Shayne holds up a folded piece of paper for a moment before abruptly standing up from his chair to walk over to where Ian is sitting in his office, head down. He gets two steps away from her before she speaks.

“Shayne,” her voice is low, but it stops him in his tracks. The blankness is gone, and she hesitates, not looking up to meet his eyes, until she too suddenly stands up and grabs his hand, dragging him towards the (thankfully, empty) kitchen.

“Courtney, I-“ he starts, cut off as she throws him against the kitchen bench and steps forward to press her lips against his. He kisses her back, he can’t not, he knows they shouldn’t and if she turns around and tells him she doesn’t want to try anyway he’s just breaking his own heart, but he doesn’t care. His whole life is crumbling around him, why not enjoy the last of it?

“I thought I was doing the right thing, Shayne. I thought I was being responsible and picking what was right for both of us to keep our jobs and our lives as is,” she sobs, when she pulls back, “I don’t think anything is ever going to be the same again. So, whatever, fuck it. I don’t want this job anyway if you’re not here. I’m so helplessly in love with you, you’re everything to me, I want to fight for us. I’m going to fight for us. I’m sorry I didn’t immediately. I want to be yours again, I don’t want to break up with you, I want to move forward with you and if that means I end up unemployed and blacklisted from this industry then- fuck it, I’ll work something out. We- we’ll work something out. Right?”

“We’ll work something out. Together. I’m sorry I’ve yelled at you, I’m sorry I’ve been aggressive. I never want to be like that with you. I’m just-“

“You’re broken,” she finishes for him, “so am I. I know I broke up with you. I know I acted like it was nothing. That was all bullshit. It killed me to do that, I spent the weekend comatose in bed. It killed me to hurt you like that and I will do anything I can to make it better.”

“Hold me. Please?” He requests, letting his voice turn as small as he feels until she reaches forward again, arms wrapping tightly around his mid-section as his own hold her close. “I love you, Courtney. I’m in love with you. Will you be mine - again?”

“Yes, Shayne. I’m so in love with you. Let’s forget we ever broke up,” she mumbles in response, face pressed tightly against him. The movement of her voice against his body almost makes him smile but he’s still crying, his emotions still a chaotic wreck.

“I need to go talk to Ian,” he mutters, “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to fight for us but I’m not sure how yet. I’m going to write something,” she replies, but it’s another five minutes before they untangle themselves, Shayne lagging behind as he follows her back into the office and then walks straight past into Ian’s.

“Yes, Shayne?” Ian greets him pleasantly, and it fuels his anger to return with a vengeance.

“I’m giving you an ultimatum. You’ve never given us a reason for that rule. We’ve already proven we can still do our jobs while we’re together in our personal lives, so no, we aren’t breaking up. Courtney is the love of my life and I’m not losing her over anything, and certainly not this job. You need to learn to live with that or I’m leaving. This is my two weeks’ notice. Fucking take it, fire me beforehand if you need to, I don’t care,” his voice grows firmer as he speaks, before he slams the piece of paper on Ian’s desk and turns on his heel to return to his own.

He thinks he’s still crying, his screen looks blurred and too bright but it’s not like he’s actually going to be doing anything for the day, so he simply sits and stares ahead of him.

\----------------------------------------

Sarah’s position in relation to Ian is complicated. He’s the president, but she has practical power over him as a producer. Mostly, they all work as equals, they don’t do the hierarchy thing within their own Smosh team and there’s very little of it at Mythical in general.

Still, she’s nervous. Her desk is two down from Courtney’s - she can’t help but hear their argument, and she already knew what had happened. They’d been secretly together for 6 months. They got caught out thanks to something about Ian seeing a message on Courtney’s phone, and then Ian made them break up or lose their jobs.

She stands up when they run off into the kitchen, falling into step beside Damien as they move to stand in the doorway and watch the couple crash into a kiss that makes both observers glance elsewhere. Courtney and Shayne both have tears streaming down their faces when they start talking again, Sarah and Damien’s eyes cautiously returning to watch them in silence. She’s never seen Shayne cry before, let alone be this broken, and Courtney looks like she’s falling apart too. It drives her to, five minutes after Shayne hands Ian his notice, stand from her own workspace and stalk into Ian’s room, making a point of leaving the door open as she crosses her arms in front of her.

“What are you doing, Ian?” She asks, knowing he knows she’s referring to the Shayne and Courtney situation in particular, and he sighs, exasperated.

“They broke their contracts. They’re contracts, Sarah, they can’t just pick and choose which parts to follow.”

“The contract only says they have to follow relevant employment guidelines. The actual guidelines can be changed, Ian,” she emphasises.

“But we have no reason to change them.”

“No reason, Ian? Really?” Her tone turns sharper, her volume rising, “You have no reason for that rule existing! You know why it was there at Defy? Because they were scared the cast would get close enough to be stronger than them - which they did, and that’s the only reason Smosh still exists now. They’ve managed to do their jobs for six months just fine without a relationship screwing with anything on camera, it’s clearly not going to impact anything there. And I mean, it’s Shayne and Courtney, for Christ’s sake! We are CONSTANTLY taking advantage of them by playing up the possibility of them being together for view bait - but they get fired if they’re actually together? How fucking unfair and shitty can you be? Is that what Smosh is? Are you going to let one of your core cast go because it’s cool for the company to play with his personal life for years but not for him to actually have one? I’m not so sure I want to work here either if that’s what we do.”

She stalks out of his office when she finishes, knowing he won’t have a response. She is aware that her voice was quite raised by the end of her rant, but she simply grimaces and glances around all the other faces in the room – an even mix of trying to pretend they hadn’t heard and overtly staring at her - before she returns to her desk, tuning out the mumbling between everyone else and the occasional sniffling or other crying noise from the couple two places down.

Courtney is the next to stand up, walk to collect a single sheet of paper from the printer, and then head for Ian’s office. She closes the door behind her, taking a deep breath as she steps forward to lay her resignation notice on his desk - on top of Shayne’s still lying there - before taking a step back away from him again.

“I made a mistake. Not in dating him or falling in love with him - in not fighting for us. If he goes, so do I. Shayne is everything to me, and as much as I love this job, if I have to pick between him and something else it’s always going to be him,” she tells Ian, softly, speaking through the tears springing to her eyes again, “and Sarah has a point. You know I’ve had feelings for him for years, Ian. I know you knew - and you still put us in everything. We always had to pretend to be a couple and we were always told to get closer in pit/games stuff and it was always us on the thumbnail. I guess you’re playing big boss man now, but - what happened to family? You’ve broken my heart over and over with having to pretend for the cameras that there might be something there but now there actually is you try to ruin it? I’ve never felt more broken in my life, Ian. I’ve never seen Shayne that broken. So. That’s my two weeks’ notice, too, unless you can find a way to change your mind.”

She pauses for a moment, but he doesn’t look at her and he doesn’t say anything so she turns and steps back out of the room, too, immediately walking to grab Shayne and pull him over to the couch in the corner of the room so they can hold each other. It’s eerily quiet in the office, no one saying a word, merely the clacking of keyboards and the occasional sob from the couch in the corner.

The printer fires up, a few minutes later, sound cutting through the tense air. Damien and Sarah both stand and walk towards it, glancing at each other in silent understanding as they do. Sarah moves over to Ian’s office, first, just as he steps out of it himself.

“Unless you change your mind, I’m gone in two weeks as well,” she states, calmly, holding out her folded piece of paper. He takes it, going to turn back into his office before Damien stops him.

“Wait, Ian,” he starts, staring their president down, “I have _never_ seen Shayne that upset. You broke my best friend - hell, Courtney too – both of my best friends. I don’t want to stand by a company that does that. You have my two weeks’ notice to resign if you don’t change your mind, too.”

“Dames, can you send me what you wrote?” Olivia asks him in a hushed whisper when he sits back down again, and he nods, before glancing at Slack to see he’s been added to a new channel - “Save Shourtney”.

“So at this point who has resigned if they can’t be together?” Garret has sent the first message, although it seems Sarah created the channel.

“Me, them obviously, and now Damien?” Sarah’s response comes first, before she adds, “which is a good chunk of the main cast…”

“I am too I just need to type up a letter,” Olivia adds.

“Sending you the template I used now Liv,” Damien types his own response before switching back over to emails and sending it to her.

“I’m tempted. I mean- look at them. What has he done? Why?” Monica is next

“I like Sarah’s point about the bait and I’m very complicit in that,” Tomey is the next to comment in the Slack channel, proof that the message has spread into their editing room just off the side, too - and proof that Sarah had indeed raised her voice at Ian to a volume everyone could hear.

“Damien, would you mind putting your template in here?” Sarah requests, “I’d offer mine but it was quite specific to my role.”

“No problem,” Damien responds, attaching his template.

The channel quietens after that, but the printer doesn’t. Damien doesn’t want to assume, there could be any reason everyone is going to the printer, but there’s a steady stream and they all tri-fold a single piece of paper as they step away and move back to their desks.

Ian steps out of his office again ten minutes later, pacing through the office towards the kitchen and beyond until Olivia stands up and stops him.

“If they go, I go,” she tells Ian, handing him her notice, “congrats, you’re losing most of your main cast. Good luck explaining that to anyone.”

She sets off a chain. Before Ian has a chance to continue walking through the room Tomey hands over his notice on the same condition, Garret, Tim, Monica, almost all of their other writers, their editors, their producers.

“Is that everyone?” Ian snaps, when the last person finally steps away from him, turning back towards his office only to grab the four notices already on his desk and add them to the stack in his hand, before stalking back through the office with them over towards the other side of the building.

“What just happened?” Shayne breaks the silence that settles over the room, he and Courtney now standing up and moving back towards their desks, although they both look like a mess and their arms are still around each other’s waists.

“About 25 resignations if you two leave,” Sarah tells them, others nodding in agreement.

“...thank you,” Courtney mumbles after a moment, wide eyed. “You don’t have to, anyone… Sorry we... drama and everything... we just...”

“It’s fine, guys. You were just trying to be happy, yeah? It’s these fuckers that made it drama,” Sarah gestures around the building vaguely as if to reference the company itself, “and this is just going to force his hand.”

\----------------------------------------

“I need to speak to Rhett and Link immediately, are they in?” Ian asks Stevie, walking up to her office just near theirs, given their door is closed but hers is open.

“How immediately?” She raises an eyebrow.

“We made a decision on Friday and this morning that decision is killing Smosh. I am not kidding. I need to see them _now_ ,” Ian emphasises, Stevie nodding with wide eyes and gesturing him through to their office. They had told her no interruptions this morning and left her to screen anyone coming to see them, but...

“We said no interruptions Stevie,” Link calls when Ian knocks at their door and immediately opens it to step inside, although his tone is more humorous than genuinely annoyed.

“Yeah well this one can’t wait,” Ian deadpans as he steps into the room and sits on one of the chairs at their small coffee table, watching as the two taller men scramble to come and sit on the couch opposite him.

“What’s happened?” Rhett asks, first.

“These are 28 conditional 2 week notice of resignation letters. My whole cast, writers, producers, editors, a handful of others. Even Tim our joint IT guy,” Ian tells them, forcefully throwing the pile of folded papers he’s holding down on the coffee table, “Shayne decided to fight us. Courtney wasn’t. Then he broke down to her in the middle of the office in front of everyone and they ran off to the kitchen and I guess got back together because now she’s fighting too and neither of them have stopped crying or let go of each other since. Sarah literally shouted at me about being unfair to them and handed in her notice ten minutes later, Damien did his next because he doesn’t like that I made his best friends so upset. Snowballed from there, I was standing in the office with a literal line of people handing me letters.”

“Well... this is certainly a situation that won’t go quietly,” Link muses, the humour gone as he looks down at all the letters spilling over the table in front of them. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I want to believe everyone just bandwagoned and will withdraw their notice later when they calm down, but I’m not so convinced. Smosh is dead if they all leave. Frankly - even if Shayne and Courtney just leave, it’s dead. You really think they’re not going to be open about why they suddenly leave and the fans aren’t going to crucify us for that?” Ian deadpans.

“You were so set when we talked yesterday on holding them to their contractual arrangements and stepping up as a boss,” Rhett reminds him, and Ian sighs.

“Everyone that yelled at me this morning raised a decent point: I don’t have a justification for that rule. They’re consenting adults, they have no power imbalance in the work environment, they can still do their jobs - if anything, they would probably be better at their jobs. And I- it is unfair. It’s...” Ian lets out another long sigh, “Court is my metaphorical little sister. I’ve known she had a thing for him for years. To have her stand in my office and quietly tell me I’ve been breaking her heart for years by putting her with him in sketches and using the idea of them as bait for views and now I’ve just killed her by turning around and breaking them up- and god, I mean, I’ve never seen Shayne cry and now he’s just bawling openly in the office in front of everyone. They’re my family. I know I’m a shit boss but they’re my family and I hurt them and I feel like shit and I can’t justify why I did it.”

“One of the things that drew us to Smosh was the dynamic amongst your cast. You all work together, you’ve developed a bond that works on camera because it exists in real life. Our management structure means your employee regulations can be amended without our consent, although we appreciate that you have involved us in this,” Rhett starts, “if you want to be a good boss, then you need to be able to stand by your decisions and defend them - even if they are a change of mind. We aren’t going to tell you what to do-“

“But I will be disappointed if you have to do a whole hiring process to find new employees or if you kill the brand,” Link interjects, “but I think we already know what you want to do.”

“Regulations can be retrospectively amended to remove a restriction, correct?” Ian confirms, Rhett just nodding.

\----------------------------------------

“Everyone, listen up,” Ian calls out, borderline-aggressively, as he walks back into the office fifteen minutes later. The environment is still tense, but this time it feels like it’s all directed against him. “I made the wrong call. I tried to step into a boss role that I don’t fit anyway without a reason to justify what I did. I’ve thrown out all your resignation notices because I’ve met your condition: the restriction on cast relationships is gone, retrospectively as if it never existed. If anyone would still like to resign, I understand, but you will need to speak to me again. It’s a credit to the work environment you all build here that so many of you stood up for your coworkers like that. That is what Smosh is, and I made the mistake of forgetting that. And Shayne, Courtney - I’m so sorry. I know I hurt you and I hate that I did. I’m so sorry.” He finishes, getting slightly choked up as he looks over to find the couple hugging tightly, staring at him as a shocked silence falls over the room.

Shayne is the first to react. He pulls - very reluctantly - away from Courtney only to stride towards Ian and pull him into a tight hug. Courtney follows, hugging both of them a moment later, and causes a wave of laughter through the office that finally breaks through the uncomfortableness.

“Thank you, Ian. The last thing I wanted to do was leave, but Courtney is everything, we’re in love and I’m not wasting that,” Shayne tells Ian, before finally pulling back from him only to let his arm wrap around Courtney’s shoulders.

“I understand. I also understand if you want to take the rest of today off to talk, given everything,” Ian tells them, Shayne quickly glancing to see Courtney nodding at him.

“Yeah, it’s been… quite a few days,” Courtney gives something between a smile and a grimace, “I know last week you said everything would be back to normal Monday – but can we end Monday here and make it back to normal tomorrow?”


	4. Live Reveal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little (or not little, 4100 words) random oneshot that I wrote in the early days of Smosh twitch streaming. The ending is a little abrupt, but I don't know where else it'd go and it kind of needs to be uploaded before all the references in it are too old.
> 
> Also - technically it's a oneshot, but it also definitely could stand as an additional chapter of my book Isolation, because it very much fits into that universe timeline-wise.
> 
> On to the fic!
> 
> (Cross-posted to AO3 a while after the other place because I forgot!)

"How long d'you think it'll be before one of us slips up on a stream?" Courtney muses, absentmindedly playing with Shayne's hands where they rest comfortably over her stomach as they lie together in his bed.

"Hmm," he acknowledges, his chest vibrating under where she's resting her cheek, "think it'll be us or someone else?"

"Ian almost did today," she points out. It was true – she'd been holding the iPad at the time and the chat hadn't even picked up on it, but Ian had mumbled something under his breath about them voting together in Quiplash all the time. Cute, he'd called it. Which, honestly, a silly thing to say anyway, it wasn't her fault that her boyfriend was funny.

"I mean, Damien definitely did call us out in that summer/winter games thing we did a few weeks back and it still made it into the edit somehow," he sighs, "livestreams are going to make it harder though."

"Yeah. I guess it's gonna happen sometime, can't hide forever," she twists herself around slowly to rest her head on his pillow beside his own, eyes meeting his.

"I..." he starts, expression cautious and considered. Courtney watches as his eyes slowly turn uncertain and look away from hers, not continuing.

"Hm?" she prompts him gently, hand reaching out to cup his jaw.

"It's fine, it was a stupid idea," he brushes it off, and she scrunches her own face up in concern.

"No, baby. Please tell me?" she requests.

He doesn't answer immediately, but his eyes return to hers with a mixture of fear and vulnerability. She takes the hint, sees his desire for affection, and leans forward to press her lips softly against his. She gives him the space to control their kiss, and he kisses her softly at first, a slow and careful pressure against her lips that builds in intensity with time. His own hand moves from where it had settled around her waist to slide into her hair. It causes her to release a soft noise of content against his mouth, feeling him grin and bring the kiss to a close in response.

"I love you. If it's going to come out anyway, I want to do it on purpose. If we made a plan for something and then... then we wouldn't have to freak out about anything, and we'd know how to react when it happens and so would the others," Shayne tells her, still with underlying nerves in his tone.

He's never been the one to take steps forward in their relationship, always second guessing if it's the right things to do and if she really wants it to happen. He's getting better, though – he'd asked her to meet his parents (in a COVID-safe, socially distanced way) as his girlfriend before she had done the same with hers – and it makes her heart happier than she'd like to admit that he's the one who brought up this little issue.

"I love you too, you're right. Let's plan something," she affirms his idea, watching as his eyes soften in relief and he laughs softly at himself.

"Let's talk about it tomorrow. I want to sleep now that's off my shoulders," he admits.

"You know you can always tell me things like that, Shayne. I'm never going to react badly to you talking about us. And I've been thinking for a little while that maybe I want to tell the people how happy we are," Courtney reassures him.

"I know, I guess, I just... this one is a lot, I dunno, you might not see it the same way, but to me it's like... kind of a commitment thing, because once we go public there's no going back on anything without a lot of difficulty. And I'm more than okay with the actual idea of committing to this with you, because I already am committed. Just talking about it is intimidating," he explains, and she nods.

"I get what you mean. And yeah, this is a lot, but I think we can do it, and we should do it. I'm with you in this. Also with you in wanting to sleep," she presses herself closer into his side as if to back up both of her points, and he laughs lightly in response.

"Love you so much, Courtney. Goodnight," he tells her softly, and she can't help but return the sentiment as they let themselves drift off.

\------------------------

They're in the midst of a filming-heavy week between all their streaming, so it's lunch time before they can actually pull a producer aside the next day to raise their idea. They'd developed it a little further sitting in Shayne's living room after they woke up, deciding that it absolutely had to work into something else they were doing and mostly be a bit of a joke. The idea isn't ready by their Friday stream, so they stay quiet then, although Courtney lets herself have an obvious private conversation with him off on a totally different tangent to where the others have gone sitting up the back during a game. Someone tells her the chat jumped on it, but she just shrugs. To be fair, that one doesn't necessarily mean anything, anyway.

Their Monday evening Board AF stream starts with an actual strategy game which Courtney is, admittedly, not great at. Shayne, for his part, hides his play behind a character he constantly slips in and out of, but he certainly doesn't win. Plus, he's seated beside her this stream, so it's not like she can lock eyes with him particularly often without being obvious, so she doesn't watch too closely. She does make a point of being aware of how often she looks to the side, keeping it to an acceptable enough level to avoid any teasing from Damien or Ian across the table. Or the chat.

Ian and Damien take the hot seat after their first break, and it allows her to step off the set for a minute and out of the studio they're using for the streams. Shayne follows her, as does Sarah.

"You still good for everything up next?" Sarah asks them. They both give a silent affirmation before she continues walking on towards the bathrooms, leaving them alone outside the studio.

"Are you sure?" Shayne asks her, and the care in his voice draws her closer to wrap her arms around his waist in a loose hug.

"Yeah. Completely. Are you?" she turns the question back on him, and he merely nods and bites his lip to contain the wide smile she can see threatening to spill onto his face.

They step into the room again a moment later to hang out off camera, occasionally throwing comments at the others until their next break. A producer confirms with them all over again during that break, and it's nice that everyone is so careful, but they very quickly give their final confirmation before they sit back at the table. He squeezes her thigh in the thirty seconds before they're on camera and she wants to return the gesture, but she isn't sure she has the time before they're on again.

"Guys, we're back for our second game today!" Matt calls out their intro, and they all get as loud as necessary to hype it up before he continues with the rules. "So, this is basically modified truth or dare – we'll go in turns around the table picking a card from the deck, and each one has a truth and a dare and you get to pick which one you do, but you gotta choose one! Plus we've added some Smosh flair with some extra cards suggested by the subscribers over in the discord!"

They settle into the game with relative ease. It's simple enough, and they move constantly around the table through different rounds, hyping it up as much as possible although there's yet to be anything particularly spicy come of the truths or the dares. Matt suggests a move to the user-submitted cards for the next round, after his next turn, Sarah up first sitting to his left.

"Oh god, you guys, did you really need to dare donut but wet? Please tell me we don't have another wet donut- GARRETT, GET OUT OF HERE!" she calls, and they're all laughing until the aforementioned jar of wet donut is placed on the table in front of Sarah by a masked, laughing Garrett. They all gag, then, and even more so when Sarah pulls the tiniest piece out of the jar to put in her mouth. She almost immediately turns to spit it into the bucket placed immediately behind her.

Ian is next, and it's pretty clear the truth about whether food battle will ever be back is targeted at him in particular. He gives a non-committal answer, of course, before passing over to Damien.

"Ooh, so the truth here is what is the worst video I've ever filmed at Smosh, interestingggggg," Damien drags out the question. He makes the requisite every bird ever joke, before seeming to change his track, "you know what? This actually turned into a pretty good video and I loved the idea of joining Smosh, but that damn fanfiction induction I had to do was the worst thing to film – like, it was fine, and you do you with the fanfics, but Shayne actually turning up?? Nope. So weird. No thank you!"

"Fucking rude," Shayne gasps in mock offence, before loudly laughing and agreeing with Damien.

Damien passes over to Courtney, then, across the table, and it makes her suddenly realise what's next after her turn. She wants to rush through her turn and get to it already, but she can't. It's gotta be smooth, look like nothing different – even though she can see Matt out the corner of her eye moving a "deck" card that actually has her own handwriting on it in front of Shayne.

"Ooh, okay, so my dare is to eat a hot pepper and I really don't feel like that is a good idea with an hour and a half left in the stream, so I think I'm going to go truth," she muses – she actually just doesn't want to do that to Shayne -, "So, what's been the worst part of streaming so far? Honestly, I wasn't even in here, but watching Ian with that vinegar – I was over in the office yelling at him to stop. What an absolute _idiot_."

"Hey!" he calls, loudly, holding up a finger as if about to make a point to defend himself. He pauses for a moment, before relaxing back into his seat, "yeah, I got nothing."

Courtney's anxiety spikes when everyone finishes laughing at Ian and she glances to the side to pass on to Shayne's turn. He glances her way, though, and his soft gaze reminds her what is actually about to happen, so she schools her features and looks to Matt again as he starts speaking up.

"Shayne, you already got this one from the deck, so you can put off an audience one until next round," Matt tells him, and it feels a little obvious and over-explained to Courtney, although she hopes it's just because she knows it's a lie.

"Ooooh, okay, okay, this is – I don't know which one I wanna do!" Shayne reads over his card, faking indecision. Although it was genuinely up to him whether he went the truth or the dare route – Courtney had told him she was cool with either.

"Read out both then!" Sarah enthuses.

"Okay, so- the truth is like, of everyone in this room, which I guess means everyone behind the cameras too, who would I be most likely to date and why? But then the dare is kinda the same, except it's to kiss whoever that person would be," he explains, finishing with a hum of consideration.

"Go the dare!" Ian calls out.

"Do the truth!" Damien enthuses, at almost the same time. It wasn't part of their plan, but it gives Courtney an idea.

"Or you could do both, y'know, since they reveal the same thing anyway," she suggests.

"Ooh, yeah, I like Courtney's idea," Matt backs her up, as do the others.

"Okay, okay, dare first then I'll give the _why_ ," Shayne grins, pushing his hand against the table as if to stand up and move towards someone else in the room.

Instead, he shifts in his seat to face Courtney, reaching out for her. She moves to him, too, hand instinctively reaching up to cup his face as he does hers. Their kiss isn't long, but it's more than a mere peck. It's enough that everyone at the table cheers and jeers at them and she can't help but smile in mild embarrassment when they reluctantly pull away, briefly glancing over to the cameras before her eyes return to Shayne.

"I'd date Courtney because I'm already actually dating Courtney. For real," Shayne laughs, although it's less of his stage laugh and more the one she's used to hearing when they're in private, "also because like, kinda in love with you."

She expects a waver of nerves in his voice when he adds the second part, but it's strong and certain as he looks straight at her and grabs her hand to entwine their fingers together. She makes a point of keeping her gaze fixed on him for a little longer, knowing her expression is a total mess of sappiness and affection.

"So, how broken is the chat right now?" Sarah asks, drawing the attention off them for a moment. Someone off camera hands the iPad to Damien, opposite Courtney, in response.

"So broken, so many emotes, so much screaming," Damien confirms, laughing.

"I should make them even more crazy, huh?" Courtney speaks up, having normalised her expression enough to look back to her normal direction for the stream, "because, just for the record, also in love with this idiot."

He squeezes her hand in response.

"Sorry chat, hope you're still alive after all that- but hey, Matt, your turn?" Shayne pushes the game on.

"I don't know how the hell I'm going to follow that but okay-" he starts, reaching for a card from the deck.

"Lowercase i's in the chat for Matt!" Ian prompts.

They have another handful of rounds around the table. Shayne and Courtney both play one-handed, their other hands firmly locked together resting on Courtney's thigh under the table. It's probably visible from some camera angles and Shayne's arm is clearly reached out to the side, but they can't find the will to care.

They take a break when they finish the game, and she can't stop herself from turning and pulling Shayne into another kiss the second they get the signal that they're off camera. She can feel his initial surprise – they kissed for the joke on the stream, they're normally not super PDA-y around their castmates – but he kisses her back, dropping her hand only to grip her shoulders with both hands.

"Cute and all but you got like 3 minutes and we gotta move some stuff," Sarah interrupts them with a pointed jab to Courtney's shoulder. It does as intended, pulling them out of their kiss and prompting them to stand and follow their castmates off camera.

"Sorry, I just..." Courtney trails off her explanation with a shrug, reaching for her bottle of water and taking a swig. Her heart is telling her she just wants to hold him, just for a minute to process all of this, and when she looks up again to meet his eyes their silent conversation tells her he feels the same.

"Excuse us but we just went public, kissed and said we're in love with each other on a livestream so like-" Shayne waves a hand as if to ask everyone to ignore them, before taking her hand and pulling her further back behind the cameras into the space at the very back of the studio.

She gets the message when they stop, wrapping her arms around him and hiding her face against his neck. She can feel his smile against her as he too hugs her tightly, one hand drawing light patterns across her back.

"I'm glad we did that. It's... relieving. That was a lot too, more revealing than I want to go normally, but just- yeah. My heart is very happy," Shayne whispers just near her ear.

"That, exactly. You're my favourite, and we're going to get hell about this online for a while but that's okay," she replies. He nods lightly as they reluctantly part and move back to where everyone is getting ready to go live again.

"It's meant to be Damien and Courtney in the hot seat to start this part off, you guys still cool with that? You can totally ignore shit in chat about you guys and just go for the easier questions if you want, if there are any," the producer tells them when they return.

"I'm happy to sub in if you want, Court?" Ian offers, but she shakes her head.

"Nah, I'll be fine. And Damien can crush Fall Guys again and give us something else to talk about too. Okay to talk about it a little bit," Courtney brushes off their concern, wandering over to sit in front of the microphone beside Damien in their hot seat area. She takes the iPad, although doesn't look at chat yet, glancing over at Shayne standing in the middle of the rest of their set. She can't help but laugh at him, glancing at the time – 40 seconds left – before she speaks.

"Baby, you look so lost," she tells him, and he blushes and shrugs before grabbing one of the seats from the Board AF table and turning it so he can sit and watch them, just off frame. Sarah joins him a moment later, and they call end of the break as Courtney starts a fake conversation with Damien about Fall Guys to transition into their hot seat section.

"Hey guys welcome back, we gonna play some Fall Guys for a bit and see what you're up to in the chat!" Damien re-intros them when the countdown hits 0 and they're live again, "you wanna do chat or play first Courtney?"

"You play, I'll do chat," she tells him, lifting up the iPad to scroll and try and find something they can actually respond to. There's a lot more emote spam than spam about her and Shayne by this point at least – it was now a good 20 minutes since it had actually happened, to be fair – and she scrolls a little, trying to find something of substance.

"Oh, god no, not this one to start," Damien complains when his game loads up.

"Someone in chat wants to know how many crowns we all got in this at this point," Courtney passes on the first decent question she sees.

"Almost 30 I think," Damien answers, as he struggles to jump around some people crowding in a corner, "dammit, let me in!"

"I haven't got one yet, I'm getting better though! Sarah, you got any yet?" she calls, glancing off the side to where they're sitting.

"I still haven't even got into top 10 ever, but Claudio has a couple now. Shayne, you had a heap, right?"

"I honestly can't remember," he laughs. Courtney knows, but she doesn't say anything for a moment, instinctively assuming she isn't _meant_ to know.

"Oh, wait, I can like- say that now can't I," she speaks up a moment later, with half a laugh, "you got just over 25, Shayne, the one you got this morning was your 26th."

"Ooh, okay, cool, so I guess I'm just behind Damien?"

"God DAMMIT these people aren't even trying they're just disrupting everyone else," Damien's response gives his frustration. He's eliminated a second later, and he holds the controller out to Courtney asking if she'd like a turn.

"Suuuure, I'll have a go," she takes the controller, swapping it for the iPad.

"Okay, chat, why the hell did you suddenly start asking about Shourtney after you knew I had the iPad not Courtney?" he asks, as soon as he scrolls to the bottom, and it makes her laugh as she switches to a different colour combo before she jumps into a game.

"I thought they'd just moved on already," she grins, "aw shit, not seesaws."

"They have not- guys, I'm not going to ask half these questions, get us something answerable," Damien glances up at the camera as he does, and Courtney would look at the other screen to read the chat herself and see what he's objecting to if she wasn't busy trying not to slide off the level. "Dunno if they want to answer any questions, actually, you already literally got them kissing so just like..."

"A couple questions are fine," Courtney tells him, "but like, guys, ask the others stuff too."

"I mean, they wanna know how long you've been dating," Damien poses it as a statement, not a question.

"Woah woah COME ON, ALMOST GOT IT," Courtney pushes at the controller aggressively, attention grabbed by the game. She hears the question but she doesn't have the capacity to answer it right now.

"Courtney can't game and talk at the same time," Shayne's voice jumps in from off camera as he stands and walks over, leaning down to place his head between the two of them in the framing. He places a hand on her shoulder, purportedly to balance himself, although she leans into it a little.

"Shut up, asshole," she tells him, handing the controller back to Damien as her elimination is confirmed.

"We've been together since earlier this year, to answer that question. And yes, we're serious, that wasn't a joke," Shayne supplies the actual answer to the question.

"I'll take chat again Damien, you can play, you're way better at that. And you can get out of our damn shot, ba- uh, Shayne," she tells him, twisting her chair slightly to push gently at his side, more for show than anything else. He laughs at her and steps out, moving back over to sit just across the set with Sarah.

"Why'd we go public now?" she reads out of the chat, when her eyes glance back to it, "because we thought we may as well do it intentionally before someone slips up on a livestream and it becomes an accident, like I almost just did then."

"Ian literally did last Wednesday during Quiplash though," Shayne calls, from off-camera, "and Damien totally did in the Games video too and it wasn't even edited out."

"Oh I know, I felt so bad about that but I thought it was better to just pretend it was nothing," Damien shakes his head, moving quickly and easily through the first level of his next round.

"All these idiots call us out as much as the comments do," Courtney laughs, before deciding to move on to some less them-related commentary.

\------------------------

They have a quiplash game next to finish off the stream, with the set back in couch-form. It's quickly and badly arranged, and Kimmy jumps in too because she was still hanging around the office finishing off some script things anyway.

"Do we have enough seats?" Damien asks, and they're already live again and all rushing into places. He's sitting on the couch, Courtney up the other end, and they glance around to see Shayne shrugging and not finding a seat.

"I meannnnnn, we wanna fit three people on this couch?" Courtney offers.

"I mean, the three of us have fit on a two-seater couch in a video once before," Damien shrugs, gesturing to Shayne. Courtney shifts to the centre, not quite touching Damien, as Shayne takes the spot where she was previously sitting.

"Okay this one is smaller," Courtney laughs, trying to find space between them, before glancing at Shayne to ask a silent question. His eyes tell her the affirmative, so she laughs, throwing her legs sideways to all but sit on his lap. "Fuck it, already kissed in this stream, we can share a spot."

"Wait, what, you kissed on camera?" Kimmy asks, incredulous.

"They be doing hella PDA today," Ian supplies the explanation.

"Which is not normal at all and it ain't going to be normal but whatever, just this once," Shayne sighs, "so, we going to move onto this Quiplash game?"

He tries to hide it, but he shifts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her a little closer against his chest once they actually move into starting the game, content to type out his answers with one hand.


	5. Vague

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quickly wrote this yesterday by the most recent karaoke stream, although as always, this is entirely fictional and does not reflect anything that actually happened in that stream or intend to do so.
> 
> And a very important note: if you happen to be someone that engages with Smosh Games streams, don't ask for, refer to, or constantly send messages about Shourtney in the live chat. It is incredibly disrespectful of them to put it so close to them and where they can actively see it. They owe you nothing. It reflects extremely poorly on fandom when the chat is full of that kind of stuff.
> 
> Also, only mildly edited this. Enjoy!

"Keen for karaoke stream?" Damien asks Shayne, pulling his mask down off his face, both of them standing amongst their cast of eight in various levels of costume.

"I mean, no," Shayne responds, a little terse, rocking back on his feet slightly.

"Why not?! It's gonna be fun!" Jackie enthuses, sliding into their convo.

"Ehhh," Shayne gives a non-response, shoving his hands in his pockets and hunching forward ever so slightly.

"So what's your costume, again, Jackie?" Damien turns the conversation, and it brings Olivia and Keith in too as they all hype up their own mix of costumes.

"I. Am. ALIEN!" Ian cries, walking stiffly and unnaturally into the room with his blow-up alien/human suit on a few minutes later. It successfully grabs almost everyone's attention, although not necessarily to praise his costume choice. It allows Shayne to step back away from the rest of the cast and over to where Courtney is also hanging back by herself, sipping from a bottle of water.

"I'm so not here for this," Shayne mumbles, under his breath, hands still stuffed in his pockets as he stands awkwardly just to her side.

"Same, my guy," she huffs in response, tilting to the side slightly to press her shoulder against his before righting herself again.

"You can sing, though, I can't," he replies, shaking his head, turning to see her shrug.

"But people think I can sing, so if I fucking suck they'll judge me so much-" she shudders, and he nods in understanding, not knowing what else to say. "And I mean, dude, you can just be silly and bad on purpose and people will be fine, that's your thing, right?"

"I dunno, singing is the one thing I just... nope," he sighs, and they both fall into silence, watching over at their friends buzzing excitedly. Courtney is the first to move, reaching out to give him a reassuring bicep squeeze before she steps into the crowd with the rest of them and tries to fake-hype herself up.

He follows, only a few minutes before they have to actually shift through to their main studio they use for streams. He steps into his character a little more, building on Keith's Napoleon Dynamite to his Uncle Rico, mock-throwing his football all over the place and taking strange power stances all over the place.

The studio is absolute _chaos_ , and it's still chaotic when they first go live. There's way more of them on at once than usual, and they're all talking in overlapping convos, stepping in and out of each other's jokes as Damien and Jackie in the hotseat try to actually start the stream while Ian also tries to start from the set.

It takes them a few songs, but they settle into a rhythm, people stepping up turn by turn to volunteer to sing next. They move through all six others on set before either Courtney or Shayne are called on. The shot they're using is over on the hotseat when it does fall to them to decide who will be nice, and Shayne looks to his right to see Courtney standing in front of their seats and pacing.

"I don't know what to – does chat mind if I do songs I did last time? I don't know what to sing," Courtney speaks, her tone quick and high and dripping with anxiety.

"I can go I guess, if you want?" Shayne offers, speaking up hesitantly. She glances to him, eyes meeting his for a moment to see his own trepidation before she shakes her head.

"No, no, I'll go," she brushes him off, pacing over to near the hotseat to request the song she has chosen before moving back to the microphone.

It does mean he can't escape going up next, though, so he dedicates half his brain while she sings to trying to come up with something he can sing that is just stupid and not really singing and also that he maybe knows the lyrics of. The other half is actively watching over Courtney – she's clearly not feeling it, and he has to try much harder than usual to force his camera face on when she moves away from the mic and he reluctantly stands up and steps forward.

"I'm probably going to fail this, I'm going to try to do it and definitely fail," he hedges, into the camera, when he steps up to the mic, feeling his heart thudding in his chest and desperately trying not to shrink back in on himself when the song starts.

One of the seats off to the left of the main camera's view is in fact not on camera more often than it is, and Shayne chooses to race straight for that seat after he stumbles through his song attempt. There are not many more songs before they take their first break, but he chooses to stay put when they do, simply pulling out his phone and flicking aimlessly through Twitter without really reading it.

"Hiding?" Courtney asks, pausing in front of him, holding out the packet of snacks she's picked up towards him in an offer to share.

"Yeah," he nods, accepting her offer and reaching into the packet to take a handful of food.

"Mind if I join you later if shit gets too much?" she asks, a little softer.

"Nah, sure. I don't plan to move," he replies, mumbling in response, and she nods in acceptance, leaning forward to rest a hand on his shoulder for a moment. He reaches up to grip her arm in response, before they both let go and turn their attention back to their work at hand, Mark Raub calling out a thirty second warning until they're live again.

Their song arrangement gets a little more all over the place in the second part of the stream, duets and group attempts starting to take more spots than solo performances. Keith starts a run of Sara Bareilles performances with Love Song, and Shayne doesn't recognise the song for a few moments until he actually starts singing, and then he's happy enough to mouth along the words with everyone else, although he makes sure he doesn't actually vocalise anything.

He moves over to the hotseat, early in the song, knowing he hasn't taken any time there yet and he probably should and there's a seat free anyway beside Courtney- he stays straight-faced, though, eyes scanning slowly over the chat and the song selection, only briefly glancing to the side to meet her eyes.

"I'm gonna bring this down, keep going with the Sara Bareilles!" she calls out, jumping up as soon as Keith finishes to squeeze in front of Shayne away from the hotseat and take the mic with much more enthusiasm than her first try. She instructs him from a distance on how to start the song, and he does just that as he moves to the righthand seat – left on camera – to let Keith slide into the one beside him.

Shayne is pretty sure there are quite a few songs in demand before he might be asked to go again, so he lets himself settle into listening to her performance as he keeps his eyes on the computer screens in front of him. Jackie stands up from the slightly off-camera seat to step into their main shot and vibe along with the song with the rest of the cast partway through, though, and Shayne quickly takes the opportunity to reclaim the spot, letting his eyes fall to Courtney and her voice fill his head strong and clear, knowing he's not on camera.

She walks straight for him when she finishes, moving towards the edge of their shot, between the set and the hotseat.

"That was great!" he tells her, along with the rest of the cast. It makes her pause, laugh, and thank everyone for the praise, still on camera, but she turns back away and her face settles back into hesitance and discomfort once she knows she's off camera and attention is on Damien, who is taking the third Sara Bareilles song straight and shouting instructions to Keith to find it.

Shayne looks up at her expectantly, but she merely hovers standing just off his side – further off camera – until Damien actually starts the song, and then her eyes shoot to his. He can kind of see it in her eyes anyway, but she silently mouths a question at him.

"Are you okay?"

He can't really answer, but he simply shrugs and tilts his head her direction to return the silent request. She also shrugs, pausing for a moment before she shakes her head.

"Can I... should we... share a seat? Do you want to?" she asks, whisper so quiet it's almost silent, and he's not sure if he actually hears her or just reads her lips. He hesitates for a moment, glancing around at all their co-workers and feeling the anxiousness and meekness wash back over him when he absentmindedly realises he's probably due for a turn again soon.

He nods.

Courtney's movement is more immediate and pointed than any of her actions have been for the whole stream, stepping forward to sit herself sideways across his lap, glancing over to the monitors in front of them to make sure her legs hanging off towards the rest of the set are not visible. She loops her arm around his neck as he holds one arm around her waist to support her back, both of their thumbs beginning to rub gentle patterns against each other where they rest. She leans into him, side pressing against his chest, and he holds tighter around her waist in response.

Olivia is the first one to look their way and visibly react in shock, immediately glancing over to the monitors. They both look away from her as she does, instead watching on the monitors as she realises they aren't on camera and plays her shock off as being something to do with Damien's singing.

They don't pay any attention to anyone else for the remainder of the song, though, instead settling silently against each other. Courtney's grip on his shoulder becomes firmer when she feels his chest shudder through an anxious sigh, and his own arm shifts from around her waist only so he can reach up and play with the ends of her hair. She leans down into his neck, a little, so it's easier for him to reach.

Damien kicks Shayne's shoe when he walks past over to the hotseat as Ian jumps up to take the next song after some chaotic deliberation over who would do it. Courtney feels it jolt his leg under her, although she chooses not to respond, eyes cast down to keep his chest in most of her vision. Shayne looks up, glaring at Damien for a second and watching as his best friend gives him a pointed stare, eyebrow raised. Shayne gives him nothing back, simply staring vacantly until Damien has to look away to step into the hotseat and start talking again.

"We are LIVE doing karaoke!" Ian exclaims, for the camera, before his song starts, throwing a glance off their direction after he does.

Shayne settles back into his quiet, insular embrace with Courtney for the first three minutes of Ian's song, though, before turning his head to whisper in her ear, low enough that he knows their mics won't possibly pick it up.

"I'm going to have to move to go next. And we're going to get questioned at the next break," he mumbles. His lips almost brush against her skin as he does, although he stays just far enough away that they don't.

"Yeah. But this helped me. So if it helped you too..." she trails off, softly, and he nods against her in confirmation before she replies, "then whatever. It's fine. Right?"

"It's fine," he reassures her, gently, and this time he lets his lips press against the skin just in front of her ear for an almost unnoticeable moment before she reluctantly stands up off his lap.

She moves across to a spot on the couch, firmly on camera, settling back into heavy involvement in the stream as he steps over to Damien at the hotseat to call out some song requests before moving in front of the microphone. He still _hates_ it, but he plays up the character he keeps forgetting he's dressed as and leans into being bad and missing half the lyrics. And he tries to hold onto the quietness of their little bubble slightly off camera in the previous song in his mind.

Their next break comes another couple of songs later, and as he predicted, they very quickly have a lot of questioning glances directed at both of them, despite the fact Shayne and Courtney are now on opposite sides of the set.

"What was _that_?" Damien asks, directed at Shayne, the first one to actually speak.

"What?" Shayne plays dumb, shrugging it off as he moves off to grab another bottle of water.

"You two getting cuddly over there, that's what," Ian is the next to speak up, "because last I knew, Shourtney wasn't a thing."

"It's not," Courtney replies, simply, Shayne trying not to react and trying not to hear the hesitance under her tone, because she's right, it's not, they aren't a thing. But...

"Riiiiiight, because I definitely act like that with dudes I'm not dating," Tommy jumps onto the bandwagon, and Shayne cringes and looks down at the floor, leaving it to Courtney to respond.

"We aren't dating. There is no defined relationship, nothing has happened, we've literally never even talked about it but at some point our friendship has evolved to a point where – I think, as I said, we literally have not talked about this – it would probably not be cool if either of us got with someone else, okay? And we're both fucking anxious wrecks about this stream, so whatever. You happy?" Courtney snaps, stress and discomfort clear in her tone as she refuses to look at Shayne.

He can feel everyone else's eyes on him, though, and he pauses for a moment in self-consciousness before he realises what matters more and steps towards her, reaching out to take her hand and silently guide her out of the studio and away from everyone else.

"We have two minutes thirty!" Damien calls, although his voice is a little lighter and a little more teasing. Shayne still reaches behind himself to flick them all the finger as they open the door on the studio and step out into the hallway, immediately turning to stand in front of Courtney and meet her eyes once the door closes behind them.

"I'm sor-" she starts, voice full of nerves, but he effectively cuts her off by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a tight hug, side of his head pressed against hers. He can feel her relief as she relaxes into his arms, her own wrapping around his waist and holding him just as tightly.

"I know this is the worst time and place to do this but- you're really important to me and I... kinda love you and if I'm not totally misreading everything and you maybe have some similar feelings for me... we could give defining things a try, maybe?" he mumbles, near her ear, feeling her press even closer to him as she laughs softly.

"Love you too, idiot. We're both such fucking idiots-" she cuts herself off, and he laughs too, relief and joy flooding his mind and his heart.

"We are, but at least we can be idiots together."

"We can. Perfect. Thank you for letting me use you as an anxiety crutch and also try to help you out and go and put us on blast like this," she sighs, and he pulls back ever so slightly to cup her face in his palm as he meets her eyes, reflecting the soft affection in his own.

"We both needed it. It's fine. And we're going to go in there and quickly tell everyone we're together but to shut up about it, and it's fine, yeah?"

"Yeah," she answers, "nothing on the cameras?"

"I... don't know," he answers, "but I don't think I have time to decide."

"That's okay," she replies, reassuringly, before they reluctantly step away from each other. His hand lands in hers as they step back into the room, looking to Layne for a timing update.

"Thirty seconds!"

"Okay, we're together, shut up, not on cameras, that's it," Shayne speaks up, when everyone's eyes turn their way. To their credit, past some initial jittering noises of teasing and excitement the rest of the cast quickly moves back into livestream mode and into more songs.

They stay apart for the rest of the stream, for the most part, bar the thirty seconds for which they are both in the hotseat and she turns sideways almost leaning back against his arms to watch Keith perform. She steps up to take the next song, though, taking Ain't No Mountain in a duet with Jackie. She kills it, of course, and Shayne swaps out his hotseat spot for Damien to move back over to his slightly hiding spot now only half off the camera to have a better angle to watch her from. She steps back for a moment, though, letting Jackie take most of the last verse before the final chorus. It confuses Shayne, until he sees her catch his eye with a question.

He hesitates, for a moment, before silently nodding and giving her an affectionate smile. The camera might be on him, at this point, he doesn't even know, but it's fine.

She sings the last chorus at him. Although Jackie is still part of the actual duet and pretty much everyone else is singing along in the background, her eyes keep flicking away from the lyrics to him, and the sentiment is there, obviously, given their little conversation in the hallway. She's been calling him 'babe' on and off for a while, too, but never quite this explicitly, and he won't pretend he doesn't enjoy her singing it at him.

She moves over towards him as the song ends. He glances over to see Brennan tracking her with the camera before he meets her eyes to see a clear request for approval of what she's about to do. He gives an almost imperceptible nod, and she motions for Brennan to continue tracking her as the song ends and she leans over and presses a kiss against Shayne's cheek.

They don't make a big deal of it after that. He grins and he knows he's blushing and looking at her with love in his eyes as she half-dances back over towards Jackie, but everyone else brushes past it, and he is quietly thankful, until Ian – kind of – breaks the streak.

"Damn, Ezio the assassin and Uncle Rico?" he calls out. Courtney and Shayne both laugh loudly, openly and very much for the cameras, though, and it is quickly moved past.

He does see that the chat has gone a certain type of crazy in response, but he makes a point of looking away from then on. Courtney does another solo song a few later, and he even steps up to do a (poor, but whatever) duet with Damien. It brings them close to the end of the stream, and they close out with a wholesome group rendition of Closing Time, him and Damien having a conversation about the childhood imagery in the lyrics more than they actually sing and Courtney joining Ian in giving covid-safe Halloween advice to the camera in the instrumental sections.

Shayne goes to her the second they're off camera, moving up to her side as everyone starts to stand up off the couch, his arm wrapping around her waist. She leans against him in return, and they don't have to wait long until a sizeable amount of attention is again on them from their fellow castmates.

"You know you will have caused so much shit? You guys are probably getting tweeted and that will be clipped and put everywhere to all hell already," Ian tells them, almost a warning. Shayne nods in acknowledgement, and Courtney shrugs.

"Yeah. We know. We'll manage. I just... you know," she brushes it off without really saying anything, looking up to meet his eyes before continuing, "I'll take people screaming our ship name at me online over some of the other fucking creeps I already get."

"That's valid," Ian nods, stepping back away from them.

"But yeah, Shayne my dude, you got some explaining you need to do?" Damien is the next to come to them, as everyone else starts to disperse at their brushing off of their little public-but-not-really thing.

"I mean..." he trails off, and Courtney tilt her head in surprise.

"Wait, Damien didn't know there was some vague thing going on with us? Thought you would've told him," she laughs, and Shayne shrugs.

"I was constantly second-guessing myself whether there was something there or not and I was scared he'd tell me I was reading into stuff too much and it'd destroy the image I had that there was something," he admits, after a moment of hesitation, and Damien raises an eyebrow.

"Just outta interest, what was happening? Because dude, I've been trying to get you to talk to Court about your feelings for a long time," Damien reinforces, and Shayne shrugs, not saying anything.

"A lot of 'accidental' falling asleep cuddled up on each other's couches, waking up, moving to the bed without saying anything and going right back to cuddling," Courtney admits, with half a laugh, "and, I mean, I think I've ended up in the same place as Shayne all but... two nights in the last couple of weeks? We're hanging out pretty... all the time."

"Okay, yeah, that's pretty obvious, guys. But, hey, happy for you," he changes tact slightly as they all move into more formally wrapping up their shoot and moving back to the office to grab their things and head home.

Shayne finishes collecting his things together before Courtney does, but he still hesitates slightly at his desk and watches her scrambling to look for a document she wants to work on over the weekend. She glances up at him briefly, giving him a soft smile before she looks back.

"There it is!" she calls, evidently finding it and pulling it into the stack of things on top of her laptop.

Shayne falls into step beside her as they walk out of the building, both saying their goodbyes and wishing their co-workers good weekends. His hand is itching to take hers, and he wants to ask her if they can hang out after work, but he's anxious again and he doesn't know whether she would want to do something like that or not or-

"You want to come back to my place tonight?" she asks him, equal parts affection and nerves in her own tone when she pauses just after they step into the parking lot, turning towards him.

"Yeah. That'd be... yeah. I was over here trying to get the nerve to ask if you wanted to hang out," he admits, laughing at himself, and she laughs lightly too.

"Cute. Of course I want to, I don't think I ever don't want to spend time with you. You coming straight over or going past yours?" she asks, and he tilts his head to the side in contemplation for a moment, letting the genuine love in her statement wash over him.

"Might follow you straight to yours if that's okay? Kinda want to hug you a whole lot. Maybe kiss you," he tells her, watching her eyes sparkle in response.

"Very okay. And I mean... you could kiss me here. If you wanted to."

He takes the hint, leaning forward to press his lips gently against hers. It's their first non-scripted kiss on the lips, although he's been increasingly frequently pressing his lips against her cheeks and forehead and hair in the last few months. Her lips are as soft and delicate as he has imagined, but the pressure she returns his kiss with has his head spinning in excitement.

They keep it quick, though, quickly breaking apart to move off to their own cars and drive to her apartment, conscious that one of their co-workers could step out into the parking lot at any moment.


	6. Trash Rental Market

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random oneshot writing the other day led to this. Once again, a case of me having to force myself to stop at some point eventually and it's definitely still 7300 words long even though I did make myself stop at a point.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> CWs: mental illness/anxiety

“Ughhh,” Courtney groans, frustrated, roughly setting her phone down on the breakroom table in front of her.

“What’s up?” Kimmy asks, from beside her, and she sighs.

“I gotta move, landlord of my place wants to move back in himself at the end of my lease in a few weeks so I can’t extend it again like I’ve been doing the last few years but I can’t fucking find anything decent,” she grumbles, “how hard it is to find just a decent one bedroom apartment? It’s not like my budget is tiny…”

“It’s really fucking difficult,” Shayne affirms, walking into the room and flopping down across the table from the two girls – beside Damien -, “I’m also trying to move right now. It’s not great.”

“You guys only looking at one bedroom places? I found the two and three bedroom stuff pretty easy to find looking with roommates,” Damien muses.

“I mean, I don’t exactly want to live with someone I don’t know at this point, and no one I know is looking for a roommate right now, so,” Courtney shrugs, “but yeah, I keep seeing 2 bedroom options but they’re just slightly out of my budget to do alone.”

“Same,” Shayne agrees, with a long sigh.

“I mean like-“ Kimmy raises her eyebrows, gesturing between the two of them, but they simply shake their heads and push the topic in another direction.

————————————————

“So like… would you consider doing the roommates thing?” Shayne texts Courtney, that evening, alongside a screenshot of three more rejection emails he’d received that day.

“If you think that’s totally weird then pretend I didn’t ask, I won’t be offended”

“I promise I’m a good roommate tho, I am quiet and clean”

“You? Quiet and clean? Right…” she texts back, teasing, as she considers the idea for a moment.

“I dunno, dude, I don’t think you’d be the worst or anything but like… I need my alone time. And I can be a weird anxious mess. I might be a shit roommate, I don’t know,” she adds.

“I need alone time too, I get it, I’d give you space. And I’m used to you being a weird anxious mess, I don’t mind… I mean, no pressure of course, if it’s not for you that’s fine, just an option,” he replies.

“Let me sleep on it and I’ll get back to you?” she suggests, Shayne quickly agreeing.

She toys with the idea during her quiet evening at home. Two bedrooms would be nice, provided there was a larger common space too. And, like, it’s Shayne – as much as she teases, she’s been to his apartment plenty of times – she knows he’s clean, respectful, and outside of filming, more of an introvert than she is. He’d absolutely give her space when she needs it. Plus, she wouldn’t totally hate the company occasionally for meals or movie nights or games, and most of the time when she does catch up with someone for that kind of chill hangout it’s him, anyway.

“You know what? I think it’s a good idea, if you haven’t changed your mind overnight. We know each other well enough not to piss each other off living together, right?” she texts him, not long after she wakes up the next morning.

“I think we’d manage, I’ll keep pissing you off to work only, promise!” he replies. She laughs, sending him a middle finger emoji before she rolls out of bed and starts getting ready for the day.

He’s got a Goldbergs filming day, so he isn’t in the office, but she spends her own lunch break scrolling through options on her phone and flicking him a handful of links. He approves her suggestions, and it starts an almost frighteningly easy process: Shayne goes to a couple of inspections on the weekend. They both immediately put in an application for both as joint tenants. On Wednesday, their top pick tells them they’re in.

“Yes!” Courtney cheers, enthusiastic, when the email appears on her phone as she eats lunch with Damien that day, “approved! Got a place to move to!”

“Oh, that’s awesome Court! You happy with it?” Damien asks.

“Yeah, it’s a good one. Pretty close to my old place so nice location, decent size, very private and secure,” she muses in response.

“Finally got somewhere!” Shayne steps into the room a moment later with his own exclamation.

“Oh, Courtney just did too! That’s great that you both did!” Damien enthuses. Shayne and Courtney glance at each other silently, for a moment, not sure what to say.

“Oh, yeah, I know,” Shayne starts casually, as he slides into a seat across from them at the table, “we got a place together, gonna do the roommates thing since both of us going it alone seemed impossible.”

“Makes sense,” Damien nods, before his smile turns teasing, “now how y’all going to handle the fact that everyone other than me will tease you about secretly dating or something if you live together?”

Shayne laughs uneasily, but Courtney nods.

“Yeah, we talked about that. All we can do is just remind them it’s not that at all, I guess. I mean, it’s a little annoying? But like, we both needed somewhere to live and we’re close enough _friends_ we could handle the living together stuff so... not going to ignore the option just because people be teasing us,” she shrugs it off, after a moment.

“That, but also it’s not a mistake we aren’t exactly telling everyone we’re moving to the same place,” Shayne adds, Courtney nodding before they all quickly switch to another topic as Ian approaches.

They sign the lease for their new place the following weekend, giving them both a week or two of lease overlap to move in, so it isn’t too hard. They have slightly too much furniture between them, but the place they snagged is sizeable so they manage to make most of it work, for the most part, and they sell any excess. Courtney moves in properly a couple of days before Shayne, on a Friday, trying to work out storage zones in the kitchen and bathroom to keep her stuff in a reasonable half of their available space.

“I mean, thank you, but you can probably take more space in the bathroom. I think you got more makeup than me,” Shayne jokes, when he does move in on the Sunday. She laughs, and gives herself a little more space in their bathroom cabinet. She’s ended up with the slightly larger bedroom, too, so she can fit her keyboard and the like in there. She offers to pay more rent, but he declines – it’s easier if they just split everything down the middle, so that’s what they do.

“Oh, hey, how was the move?” Olivia asks Courtney the Monday following.

“It was fine, pretty easy honestly, I’ve had time to sort it all out so it was simple,” she replies, with a shrug.

“Oh, I think Shayne moved into his new place this weekend too!” Kimmy points out, Shayne himself confirming as he slides into the conversation.

“Yeah, I had like ten days of overlap on my leases so I’ve had a fairly easy go too, progressively moved some stuff, just final big things this weekend,” he confirms, nodding. They manage to both avoid actually showing anyone pictures of their new place, too, and neither of their moves come up again until later in the week.

On Monday, Shayne had an afternoon appointment elsewhere and took a half day at work, so neither of them considered a particular issue – but he raises the subject when he runs into Courtney making breakfast on Tuesday morning, having himself just returned from the gym.

“So like… when we are working the same hours and whatever… It’s kinda silly to both drive there, right? Like, do you want a lift to work today?” He asks, scratching his neck awkwardly, and she nods.

“Yeah, true, sure.”

So, they start driving to work together. It’s not a big deal, until Friday. They turn up at the same time as Ian, both stepping out of Courtney’s Fiat as he steps out of his own car beside hers.

“Morning guys!” he greets them, fumbling with a pile of papers and his keys to try and find a way to also pick up his coffee to take into the building.

“Morning Ian,” Courtney laughs, Shayne also throwing in a greeting as Ian finally gets his shit sorted out.

“Wait- why did you two turn up together?” He asks, suddenly, a teasing grin spreading across his face as he pauses in front of his car to stare at them.

“Not that,” Courtney replies, immediately, exasperated.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to both drive from the same place when we’re doing the same hours, does it?” Shayne supplies, with a shrug, as all three walk towards the building.

“Yeah- but why are you driving from the same place, anyway? You guys are suspicious as fuck,” he points out, and Courtney sighs.

“We ended up getting a place together because we couldn’t find anything alone. So. Doing the roommates thing. _Just_ roommates,” she reinforces, Ian’s wide grin showing clearly that he is not buying it.

“Oh, yeah, sure, Shayne and Courtney literally living together is apparently still just friends. Suuuure,” he teases.

“Ian, seriously, we’re not dating. Chill it,” Shayne snaps, after a moment. Ian raises his hands defensively after a minute, backing away from them when they enter the building to head towards his own office. Shayne turns to Courtney to apologise, but she waves it off.

Ian brings up their living situation again at lunch, in front of a group of others. Shayne rolls his eyes before flicking them down to his phone, checking out of the conversation. Courtney, for her part, sighs and forces a laugh along with everyone joining in and teasing them, trying to brush it off. It continues, though, and she too begins to get frustrated, glancing over to see Shayne’s increasingly visible annoyance.

“Guys. Seriously,” she speaks up, tersely, “we put up with a degree of teasing but- can you not make our goddamn home lives weird and awkward for us? We’re just friends, okay? We’re doing the roommate thing because the LA rental market is trash and we both happened to need to move at the same time. That’s all.”

“Why’s it make it awkward if there’s nothing there?” Ian grins, not getting the point. It’s her breaking point.

“Fucking fine then, Ian. Why did you have a meeting with just you and Sarah at her house last week then, huh? You secretly in love with her, are you? You secretly fucking?” She snaps at him, aggression seeping out of her tone.

“Sarah’s married,” Ian defends, shrugging it off.

“Cool, so you only respect women’s relationship autonomy when they’re married?” Courtney spits back, standing from her seat and stalking out of the room.

There is a full thirty seconds of awkward silence, before Shayne breaks it.

“She’s got a point, dude,” he speaks, his own voice frustrated and terse, “and you know, you pissed off one of my best friends and I’d like to go see if she’s okay but I can’t do that without you doubling down on being a dick, can I?”

“I’ll go,” Olivia offers, shooting Ian a warning glance as she stands and follows the path Courtney had taken out of the room and towards the bathrooms. Others start awkwardly making their exits back to their own workspaces then, too, until only Shayne, Damien and Ian remain.

“Shayne-“

“Don’t,” Shayne cuts Ian off, immediately, shooting him a still-angry look.

“I just-“

“I said don’t.”

“I-“

“Ian!” Shayne snaps, “I don’t want to fucking hear it, okay?”

“Can you just let me fucking explain!” Ian snaps back, voice raised. Shayne and Damien both look at him in disbelief and distrust, but he continues, “maybe I pushed it too far today, okay, but there’s a reason we tease you two. You’re clearly very close – and you say you’re just friends, and maybe you are, but it looks to everyone else like there’s something there, and I push that because I care about both of you and I know you’d be good for each other.”

“That’s not your decision to make, Ian,” Damien points out, quickly, before glancing back to Shayne as he sighs loudly.

“We are just friends. Anything else there is… unrealised, at best, and if you think we’re good for each other- you being pushy is never going to make it easier for anything to happen, and if anything it’s going to threaten our friendship so we won’t have _any_ relationship at all, okay?” Shayne replies, voice still tense, although much quieter. Ian raises an eyebrow in response, reading between the lines, looking for a direct admission. Shayne gives him nothing more, though, simply staring him down before he nods and walks out of the room.

“You okay, dude?” Damien asks, as soon as they’re alone, watching Shayne let out a shuddering breath.

“I mean- I don’t know. Yeah, I guess so. I need to talk to her about it before it becomes awkward, though, especially now we literally live together,” he grumbles, “maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Nah. You guys will be absolutely fine. You work well with and around each other, it’s a good base to start from for living together. And you’re both deadest on brushing off all this stuff, I don’t think either of you would let it get awkward,” Damien reassures, lightly, and Shayne nods.

“Part of me worries I will fall into thinking there’s more there if we get too... comfortable living together,” he admits, quietly, and Damien nods.

“That might be a risk, yeah, but if you are both that comfortable... maybe that’s a good thing,” he replies. Shayne shoots him a look before relenting, nodding, and reluctantly standing up from the table to go get ready for their next shoot.

————————————————

They talk about it in the car home that evening, although mostly they just talk about how it’s annoying and they’d like their friends to quit it. Shayne tells her he might have got through to Ian, and Ian approaches them both the next morning to apologise.

“I’m not going to stop teasing you entirely, but I’ll stop going that direct on it,” he tells them. They both roll their eyes, but it’s something, so they nod and move into their workday.

Truthfully, they fall into living together well. Shayne thanks Courtney for bringing all her plants with her – he’s always wanted an apartment full of plants – and she thanks him for the extra gaming consoles. They are easily aware enough to know when to give each other space, but they cook for each other and have meals together sometimes too because the company is nice. Their routines diverge where doing so is convenient – they shower at different times of day, so there’s no competition for the bathroom, for one – and where they converge, they fit nicely together.

Damien is the first of their friends to visit. They have nothing to hide from him, but still, Courtney makes a point of going out to run a handful of errands while he’s there, and Shayne thanks her afterwards for giving them the space. He does the same when she invites one of her own friends over the following week.

Instagram is the difficult one – they absolutely can’t make it public that they live together. They give themselves different zones of the house: Courtney posts selfies from her bedroom (the lighting is best there anyway) and the front living area where all her plants are. He posts shirtless mirror selfies from the bathroom and stupid jokes from the kitchen. They both get comments about having moved, but no one seems to catch on to the fact they’re in the same apartment, so it’s fine.

All in all, they settle into living together. They work well around each other, and although there’s a handful of arguments, they manage to talk through them. And, after a while, their coworkers let everything around it become normal too: because why wouldn’t they turn up to work together when they live in the same house?

————————————————

They’re both feeling a quiet alone time kind of night, a few months into living together. Courtney retreats into her own room and puts music on as soon as they get home, only briefly emerging to scavenge a handful of snacks for her dinner a couple of hours later. Shayne, for his part, lets himself get lost in a book he’s been meaning to read for a while. He vaguely notices her music turning off, at one point, but it’s the darkening of the sky out their windows that makes him realise when it is getting quite late. He reluctantly stands up from the sofa, slotting a bookmark into his book and setting it down on the coffee table before he stretches and moves around the room to close curtains and get ready for bed. He floats mindlessly through his own evening routine, paying no mind to the other closed bedroom door even when he walks past it to step into his own next door - because why would he?

It's as he’s hanging up his shirt, standing right beside the wall he shares with Courtney’s bedroom, when he hears what sounds a lot like a sharp sob. It gives him pause for a moment, but he doesn’t want to invade her privacy – especially on the off chance it is less an upset sob and more something else – so he continues on, changing into his sleepwear and climbing into his bed.

In the silence of his dark room, though, the sounds become clearer. He has grown to know Courtney’s crying, in a way. She’s a frequent crier, and he’s seen enough at work to learn her different cries. He knows her anxious crying best of all, given he’s often the one that notices when something is too much for her and pulls her to the side to try and work through it all.

But she’s at home, in her own bedroom, alone by choice – so he should leave her be, right?

He tries to ignore the lump in his own throat as he listens to her ragged, panicked breaths increase and her tears get worse. He manages another four minutes, but then he hears her muttering angrily at herself – he can’t make out the words, but he knows the tone – and he finds himself silently sliding out of his bed to move towards her room.

He hesitates outside the door, fist raised as if to knock. She’s still panicking, he can hear it even more clearly out in the hallway, and she doesn’t seem to have heard him moving at all.

He knocks softly after thirty seconds of hesitation, hearing a clear hitch in her breathing and crying in response. He isn’t sure what to do next - he hears shuffling, and he hears her move closer to the door, but she doesn’t open it.

“I’ll disappear if you want me to, no pressure, I can pretend I heard nothing- but I just wanted to check you’re okay, Court,” he speaks softly through the door, after a moment. He hears her soft sigh in response.

“Can you come in?” she mumbles, after a moment, voice seeming further away from the door again.

He meets her request, gently opening the door to see her curling up on herself sitting at the foot of her bed, shaking through an obvious panic attack. He closes the door behind himself, immediately pushing away his own concerns about being in her space as he strides over and sits beside her, although some distance away, on the end of the bed. He doesn’t move to touch her, but he offers out a hand towards her resting on the bed, letting her decide what she needs. She looks down at his hand, hesitating for a moment before reaching out to take it in her own with a tense grip. He takes to running his thumb gently and repetitively across the back of her hand, feeling the anxiousness still coursing through her.

“Do you want to tell me what’s up, Court? Or you just want to sit?” He offers, voice soft and as comforting as he can manage, concerned eyes watching her as she looks down at the floor. Her eyes briefly flick up to his, but it’s long enough for him to see the sadness in them, and it makes him grip her hand tighter.

“I’m just fucking- stupid and pathetic and useless,” she mumbles, after another moment of silence, “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, no one really needs me or wants me around, I’m just kind of there. Even at work... everything I write goes through so many edits from people better than me, I’m not great at directing, and even in the cast... you’re the funny one, Damien’s the smart nerdy one, Olivia’s the silly one, Ian’s the straight man, and I guess I’m just the hot one with all these fucking creeps following me everywhere but apparently I can’t be that attractive because my dating life is fucking dead anyway-“ she rambles, before abruptly coming to a stop with a jagged sob as she slumps even further to make herself as small as possible, breath coming out in disorganised gasps.

“Court, can you look at me, please?” Shayne requests, shifting slightly closer and lifting her hand up towards his chest, “breathe with me, okay? Deep breaths. Like I am.”

She doesn’t look at him immediately, but when he starts taking careful, timed breaths, he can feel her hand pressing lightly against his chest as she tries to follow along. Her breaths start stuttered and rough, but they slow, and after a minute she looks up to meet his eyes gratefully before she drops her hand away from his chest and shifts closer, leaning up against his side. He takes the hint, wrapping an arm around her shoulders in a loose hug. He can still feel her trembling, and she’s still crying lightly, so he rubs his thumb in gentle strokes across the top of her arm as he mentally sorts through the possible approaches to calming her anxiety.

“I’m going to ask you to do look, feel, smell and hear, okay? You don’t have to say it out loud, if that’s not easy, you can just think them – but we’re gonna concentrate on here, okay?” He explains, softly, “what’s four things you can see?”

She nods against his shoulder, and he figures she’s naming objects in her head until she starts speaking, voice low and still ever so slightly trembling.

“The door… my converse… the plant on the dresser’s new flower… my grease 2 poster,” she states, slowly.

“Three things you can feel?” he requests, next.

“Your thumb rubbing my arm, the bed I’m sitting on, and…” she trails off, pausing for a moment.

“Hmm?” he prompts, gently.

“Your chest vibrating when you talk.”

“Two things you can hear?”

“Your voice. Insects outside,” she supplies, her own voice growing a little more stable, albeit still quiet.

“One thing you can smell?”

“You. You always smell nice,” she mumbles her final comment, but she pulls away from him ever so slightly to look up and offer a soft smile before she again presses herself against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling gross about yourself, Court, but you know, I don’t think any of that is true. So much of my humour – so much of everyone at work’s humour – wouldn’t work without you there. You’re so funny by yourself, too, you’re driven and witty and you have killer sketch ideas that no one else could come up with. You’re the best at audience engagement of any of us, and the stuff you’re directing is some of our most successful. And I know the creeps are a lot, and I hate that you have to deal with all that – but you aren’t just the hot one, or something like that. But you’re definitely not unattractive, either. Sometimes dating things just don’t happen… anyone would be lucky to date you, okay?”

“Thank you,” she replies, gently, after a moment. She doesn’t fully believe he’s right, but she can tell he’s being genuine, so she settles into comfortable silence and directs her mind to focus in on his comforting hold around her until she finally stops shaking and her tears slow.

“You feeling a little better?” He asks, a good ten minutes later.

“Yeah. Thank you. I dunno what I’d do without you,” she mumbles.

“Do you have panic attacks at home very often?”

“Not really. I only have a couple times. This is the first one since we lived together,” she admits, “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“You didn’t, I was just about to go to bed. But hey, it’d be okay even if you had. If I can be there to help ground you when you need someone, I want to help, okay?” He reinforces.

“Okay,” she replies gently, after a while, before adding quickly, “we have an early start tomorrow, you should go to bed, I don’t want to keep you up.”

“Are you going to be okay if I leave? Will you sleep?” Shayne queries.

“I... don’t know. I probably won’t sleep,” Courtney admits, squeezing her eyes closed, and he nods above her.

“Is there any way you would sleep?” He asks.

“I... maybe...” she trails off, before meekly adding, “if I could hold your hand, maybe.”

“Then I’ll stay, if you’re comfortable with that?” He offers.

“You don’t have to,” she tells him, but he quickly shakes his head.

“I know, but if it’ll help you then I want to, okay?”

“Okay,” she relents a moment later. He guides her to move further onto the bed, then, and they both climb under the covers on opposite sides. She reaches out into the middle of the bed to take his hand, before squeezing her eyes shut in embarrassment.

“Shayne?” she says his name, hesitance clear in her voice.

“Yeah, Court?”

“I- it’s fine if you say no if it’s too weird. But I… can you hold me? I want to feel protected,” she mumbles the end, and despite her request, shies away from him and pushes further into her own side of the bed.

“I can do that,” he tells her, voice certain, shifting closer and moving his arms as if to invite her to make the last move closer. She does, shifting and turning to press her back against his chest as his arms wrap protectively around her.

“Thank you,” she mumbles.

“I got you. Always here for you, Court,” he tells her gently.

They wake in much the same position, pressed against each other in her bed. She’d desperately needed the comfort and the company overnight, but with eight hours of genuinely restful sleep behind her and feeling much less anxious, she feels a little awkward to be waking up pressed so close against him, as comforting as it is.

“Hey. How you feeling?” He asks her gently, when she twists around to face him and moves a little further away. It doesn’t escape her that he keeps his hands on her skin, gently holding her.

“Better. A lot better. Thank you for all this,” she tells him, cheeks flushing with red.

“Of course. Always here for you, dude, I mean it,” he tells her, and she nods.

“Sorry if the asking you to sleep here was weird. I just- yeah.”

“It doesn’t need to be any different to me hugging you through a panic attack when we’re awake,” he tells her, and she nods, accepting his reasoning.

————————————————

“Damien,” Shayne pulls his best friend aside that afternoon. He directs them towards the breakroom, first, before Shayne changing his mind and shifts instead towards the small courtyard out the back of the building. LA’s weather is being uncharacteristically poor, so it’s a safe bet they’ll be left alone outside.

“What’s up, Shayne?” Damien asks, when they stop in the courtyard, voice tinged with concern.

“I think we’re getting too comfortable. Or I am. I don’t know. I- I think it was fine, we were just coexisting, but last night when I went to bed I could hear she was having a panic attack- like, a really bad one- and I couldn’t stop myself from going to check if she was okay. But that’s like, a good friend thing, right? I think?” He pauses, not entirely sure where he’s going.

“I mean, yeah, checking on an upset friend is fine, but what else is there?” Damien prompts.

“She asked me to go into her room when I knocked on her door – it’s the first time I’ve actually been in there – and I did the usual thing, trying to help her ground herself and breathe normally and whatever. And she cuddled up to me but that’s not abnormal when she feels like that,” Shayne pauses again, taking a deep breath, “but then… I stayed overnight. At her request. And it wasn’t just sharing her bed, we were spooning all night. And I could tell she felt weird about it this morning so I brushed it off like it was the same as hugging awake but… it’s not, is it?”

“I still think you can put a lot of it off to the context. Panic attacks are rough, dude,” Damien nods, “but at the same time… yeah. Close spooning?”

“Close enough I ended up eating her hair.”

“Ah… yeah. I don’t want to tell you not to look out from her when she needs it, because that’s totally normal for you guys. But just… be careful, Shayne. Don’t hurt yourself over it,” he instructs.

“What do you mean?” Shayne requests.

“I feel like the next conversation we have about this will be you freaking out that you’ve crossed a line by enjoying her cuddling up to you more than a friend should. I think- if you get to the point where that’s going to be an issue, you need to be ready to talk to her about it, because at least then you can know what she’s comfortable with,” Damien responds sternly. Shayne wants to debate him, but he sighs, knowing his friend is right.

“And that’s definitely not a disaster waiting to happen when we’re literally living together.”

“I still think it’d turn out better than you think, Shayne.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” Shayne asks, foot twisting against the ground in rare vulnerability.

“Then you cross that bridge when you get there. But right now, you’re not even slightly prepared to talk to her, are you?” Damien points out.

“I don’t know,” he admits, pausing and glancing around to gather his thoughts without meeting Damien’s eyes, “I don’t know if I’m already too far gone and reading into things I shouldn’t but- we are so comfortable, we work well together. And I mean, we both need our alone time but we’re spending a lot of that time together without it being a problem… And she does go to me for comfort. More than anyone else, I see that. And she touches me a lot. I don’t know… maybe I’m not quite so certain there’s nothing there. But I’m not convinced, either.”

“That doesn’t really sound like reading into things, Shayne. You know your relationship better than I do, but- that all seems like valid observations to me.”

“I guess so,” Shayne replies, nodding carefully, before directing them to both head back inside to their jobs and end the conversation.

————————————————

It happens again six weeks later, only this time Shayne arrives home from a Goldbergs shoot day to see Courtney already mid-panic attack on their living room couch. He skips any hesitance entirely and rushes to her side, arms wrapping tightly around her as she buries her face against his shoulder. He goes through grounding and breathing techniques, again, and she doesn’t want to talk about it this time but she calms enough that he manages to convince her to at least eat some dinner with him,

“How you gonna sleep tonight?” He asks her, carefully, as she helps clean up afterwards. He watches her pause with a half-dried plate in her hands, close her eyes, and look away from him as her cheeks flush with red.

“Can you cuddle me again? It helped. A lot,” she admits.

“Of course,” he affirms, simply, although he quickly finds Damien’s words playing through his mind. _Don’t hurt yourself over it_.

He briefly shifts into his own bedroom to get changed, but soon he is pulling back the covers to climb into her bed. He’s there before she is, which is possibly even worse, but thirty seconds after he settles on his side she too slides under her covers and across the bed into his arms.

“Thank you, Shayne,” she whispers, as his arms wrap protectively around her and their hands tangle together in front of her.

“Anything to help you,” he replies gently, genuinely, pushing away the reminder in his mind that the statement didn’t feel entirely platonic even to him.

They don’t say anything else, though, simply settling into sleep locked together.

Courtney is the first of them to wake in the morning. Much like the previous time, she had an uncharacteristically good sleep, and this time she lets herself acknowledge why. He’s good at cuddling her – between the size of his biceps and how caring he is, his hold on her manages to be both tight and gentle. It’s an all-encompassing warmth without being smothering and it makes her feel overwhelmingly safe, the exact antithesis to her panic attacks.

She twists to face him after a moment, watching with intrigue as he slowly wakes up. She hasn’t moved far away at all, and it gives her the space to examine the details on his face as his expression twists slightly before settling into just-woken-up sleepiness. He blinks groggily a few times, and she notices how long his eyelashes are, before his eyes shoot open in evident surprise at how close she is.

“Good morning,” he tells her. She can feel his breath against her lips.

“Morning,” she tells him, softly, smiling lightly and wrestling with herself internally. She gives in after a moment, pressing forward to nestle her head under his chin against his chest and mould herself against him. He reacts in mild shock, but quickly uses his arms around her to hold her just as tightly.

“You doing okay?” he asks, gently.

“Yeah. A lot better,” she replies, mumbled against his chest before she pull back to look at him, “I just- I enjoy being in your arms. Your cuddles are just… nice. So. Yeah. Thank you.”

“I’m glad I can help. I like holding you, too,” he replies, voice light although his mind is whirring. She doesn’t say anything in response, but she meets his eyes with a soft smile for a moment before her gaze flicks ever so slightly lower on his face. She’s quickly moving, though, away from him and out of the bed into her morning routine.

Shayne, for his part, stays in the bed a moment after she leaves the room, reaching for his phone and holding it up above him to take a selfie he immediately sends to Damien.

“It happened again,” he texts, simply, knowing the photo will provide all the context necessary.

“Talk to her.” Damien’s reply is quick, and Shayne sighs.

“I kind of want to. I’m not sure the day after she’s had a massive anxiety attack is the right time.”

“That’s valid, but you can’t put it off forever.”

“Can we get lunch out of the office today? I think I need to talk through it before I actually do it.”

“Sure Shanye.”

“Who you texting?” Courtney asks, stepping back into the room and moving to her dresser to start flicking through clothes.

“Damien. Sorry, I got distracted I’ll get out of your-“

“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” she brushes off his concern before he even states it, and it makes his mind stutter. He’s not meant to be in her room. He’s certainly not meant to be in her bed, right?

“Wonder what Ian would say if he knew about this?” Shayne muses, before he can stop himself, but Courtney takes it as the joke it wasn’t and laughs loudly as she shifts to open another drawer. He looks away when he sees her pulling out underwear.

“Good thing he doesn’t, because I’m not sure we could explain away literally sleeping together,” she grins at him when she turns back towards him, and he forces a laugh as he finally sits up, watching her step out of the room and towards the bathroom to shower before he too makes his own exit.

————————————————

“You absolutely need to talk to her. That comment about Ian was an opportunity, you know,” Damien tells him, when they run off to have lunch alone later that day.

“Yeah, I... I know. Yeah. I just... don’t even know what to say. I don’t know when to put it on her, either, part of me wants to just go with it while it’s relevant to the cuddling but not when she’s struggling but I think she seems pretty normal today-“ Shayne cuts himself off, shaking his head.

“My perspective is that she actually seems quite relaxed and happy today. Possibly _because_ of last night- but either way... I think you need to do it today. After work,” Damien pushes. Shayne pauses for a moment before relenting.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll... yeah. I’ll talk to her later.”

It’s his turn to be a nervous wreck for the rest of the day. He’s obviously off his game in their shoot after lunch, and he feels her concerned eyes on him every time they’re near but he simply waves it off with a forced shrug.

“You sure you’re okay, my guy? You seem off,” she comments, directly, in the car as they near their apartment that evening. His eyes don’t leave the road in front of him.

“Just... nervous. I need to talk to you about something when we get home,” he tells her, hating the slight tenseness in his voice. He doesn’t want to sound angry at her, because he isn’t.

“Okay, but you know you never need to be worried about talking to me about anything, right?” She reassures, a hint of nerves invading her own tone alongside her concern for him. He shrugs, saying no more until they get home. He continues in silence as they put away their things, before moving to sit himself on one edge of the couch.

He leans forward, roughly running his hands across his face and through his hair as he lets out a loud sigh. For her part, she sits sideways on the couch, legs crossed under herself and facing him.

“Can you just let me talk at you for a bit first?” He requests, voice muffled where his face is again hidden in his hands.

“Okay,” Courtney provides, cautious. Reluctantly, he looks up and meets her eyes.

“I truly don’t mind cuddling you. I really am here for you as much as I can be, because I care a whole lot about you, Court, but it would be a lie to say the feelings behind that care are entirely platonic. I never want to cross any lines, I know we’re just friends and I absolutely respect that. You’re my best friend, I value having you in my life so much and I don’t want this to ruin that. But I just- I know we’re getting more comfortable living together, and I’m worried we’re getting into territory where I might be emotionally crossing lines between friends and something else, and I just… felt like you should know, in case it changes how comfortable you are with getting close to me,” he tells her, and he manages to hold her gaze and keep his voice level as he speaks, but he looks away shyly when he finishes. It makes him miss her soft smile and the bite of her lip.

“Shayne...” she whispers his name with more affection than he expects, and he shoots his eyes back to see her looking at him softly, blushing slightly.

“Court?” He repeats back, hesitant, when she doesn’t continue. He watches her take a deep breath.

“I’m struggling to stick on the just friends side of that line too. And I think I have been for… longer than we’ve lived together. There’s a reason you’re the first person I go to for anything, upset or happy, and it’s not just that you’re closest or my best friend. There’s something more between us, yeah, it’s not just you. I think there… maybe always has been something there, although I hate to admit everyone teasing us is right,” she tells him, voice turning light and joking at the end. It makes him laugh, cutting the nervous tension a little.

“The teasing didn’t help. I- I might have said something a long time ago if everyone wasn’t so pushy. It unnerved me. It meant we spent a lot of time denying there was anything there,” he admits, after a moment, and Courtney nods.

“Yeah, it didn’t help. But I…” she trails off, turning hesitant and shy as she reaches one hand out towards him. He quickly takes her hand in his, gently entwining their fingers together and smiling reassuringly at her. “I know this is very weird given we literally live together but- I like you a whole lot, Shayne. And I would like if we quit pretending we’re just friends and maybe tried the dating thing, if you’d like that?”

“I like you a whole lot too, Court. Yeah. I’d like to try the dating thing with you,” he replies, not able to stop himself grinning widely as her eyes twinkle and her own smile grows.

He glances down, after a moment, eyes locking on their hands twisted together against the couch. It’s comforting, but it’s not enough, and this time he’s the one that shifts closer, until his side is pressing against hers. For once, she wraps her arms around him, pulling him closer so his head leans against the front of her shoulder.

“I almost kissed you this morning,” she admits, after a moment of comfortable silence.

“Your face was so close to me when I woke up. I liked it but- I freaked out a little about that,” he admits, in return, feeling her nod above him.

“What changes now? Like... we’re kind of in a weird position. I’ve never started dating someone I’m already living with and already cuddle and touch constantly,” she queries, and Shayne shifts to sit up straight again to answer her, although he keeps their close contact.

“I... yeah, I know what you mean. It’s kinda weird. If we started from where I’d usually start with relationships we’d be going backwards and I don’t really want to do that. I think we- I mean, something changes, yeah? We wouldn’t be sitting like this a month ago. And we wouldn’t be thirty seconds from actually kissing, either-“

“Only thirty?” She buts in, smirking at him, a challenge in her eyes.

“Less,” he responds, instead, lifting one hand up to cup her cheek.

He pauses for a moment, giving her an opportunity to say no, but instead she drifts subtly closer and lets her eyes fall closed. He does the same, pressing forward to meet her in a gentle, purposeful kiss. It’s quick, but her own hand move up to grip his jaw and pull him into another, firmer, kiss, as soon as their first breaks.

“Let’s just go with it and whatever happens, happens, yeah?” Courtney murmurs, when they do pull back slightly and open their eyes.

“Yeah. And I’d like for a whole lot more of that to happen,” he admits, and although his statement is confident, she can see his nervous blush.

She responds by pulling him in for another kiss, only this time, it doesn’t break.


	7. Family Photos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it's a few days late, but I had a vague idea for the end of this fic around Christmas and worked backwards from there to get a nice little Christmas oneshot.
> 
> As always, please remember that even if I'm borrowing identities of people that really exist, this is entirely fictional and not representative of any real people or events.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Hi Shayne, Courtney! Merry Christmas!” Kenn calls as he answers the door, pulling both into loose hugs in turn as he invites them into his house. They follow him through to the main living area, wandering slowly between groups of family to greet them. Both Courtney’s younger brothers are present with their girlfriends, as is her eldest sister along with her own husband and kids. The kids cheer happily at Shayne and Courtney’s arrival, although they are well aware that there is a slightly adjacent true reason for the excitement.

“Is everyone here? Can we do presents now?!” the eldest child asks, bouncing on her feet as she pleads with her mother.

“No, Jane, we’re still waiting for Auntie Kari, and Auntie Kathryn and Uncle KC and their families, all your cousins, okay?” Kami reminds her daughter, who huffs in annoyance for a moment before rushing back to playing with her brother.

“She’s keen,” Shayne jokes, as he and Courtney move to greet Kami and her husband.

“Oh, so keen. It’s the first year we’ve made them wait for all their presents when everyone’s here instead of getting stuff from Santa as soon as they wake up…” Kami sighs, before brightening her tone, “great to see you guys, though, Merry Christmas!”

It isn’t long before the remainder of the family start to filter through Kenn’s bright entryway, through to the living area. KC and his wife and kids are next, quickly followed by Kari – by herself, this time – and, a few minutes later, Kathryn and her family.

“Everyone’s here now, right? Jane said when everyone’s here we get presents!” Jackson, KC’s eldest, enthuses not long after the final arrival, eyes flicking excitedly between his mother and grandfather.

“Okay, okay kids, I think we can do presents now,” Kenn grins, directing everyone over towards the sofas and nearby Christmas tree, “who’s going to help out Santa and hand out gifts this year?”

“I don’t have the beard, but I can help,” Shayne volunteers, breaking into a laugh when one of Kathryn’s kids – the youngest, who only recently learnt to walk – almost runs into his leg in her wobbly attempt to get closer to the tree and all the other kids.

Kari joins Shayne in gradually sorting through the pile of gifts around the tree to allocate to their correct recipients. The kids are almost evenly split in preference between the ‘tear at wrapping paper and throw everywhere in flurry of activity’ camp, and ‘carefully pull at tape to neatly unwrap without ripping the pretty paper’, although the former group ensures chaos reigns. They are all equally appreciative of their assortment of gifts, though, the adults’ own small Secret Santa left aside as they all jump in to assist with removing and disposing of packaging, and in the case of the robotic dinosaur Jackson receives, locating batteries – and then quietly calming down Kathryn’s youngest when the dinosaur’s robotic roar startles her to tears.

The kids receive their fair share of outdoor toys, and it causes them to quickly take their chaos and energy outside into Kenn’s backyard, choosing first to mess around with a portable soccer goal one of the younger kids had been given.

“Well, adults’ turn now?” Kari suggests, taking up her role as gift-allocator yet again, Shayne taking a spare seat near Kathryn instead. They’d kept it to a small spending limit – they were all old enough that Christmas was much more about getting together than the gifts – but they have all been creative with their ideas. Shayne, for his part, receives a cap to add to his collection in the form of an official LA Fire cap, from Kenn, while his own contribution is a set of themed D&D dice for Kami’s husband, an avid player. Courtney gifts Clarke a jumbo packet of wildly patterned socks (he’d spent a good part of the year complaining about wanting better socks but had never actually bought any himself), and Kari gifts her a handful of pins collected on recent travels.

They all quickly move from thanking each other for the gifts – and laughing, where appropriate, given so many of them were jokes – into tidying up the living room again, wrapping paper separated from soft plastic packaging into recyclable and non-recyclable piles, before all is tidied into the appropriate bins.

“I better check on them outside, make sure they’re all getting along,” Kathryn jokes, KC’s wife quickly agreeing and stepping outside with her as the others settle into catch-up conversations once again.

“Man, those dice are fantastic, thanks for that one - you don’t play though, right?” Kami’s husband approaches Shayne, giving a familiar pat to his back as he does.

“Glad you like them, dude! Nah, I haven’t, we play a bunch of intense board games and the like with work but I’ve never got into D&D or been around enough people that want to play it... you got a regular group still though, right?” Shayne replies, genuinely interested and settling happily into the conversation.

“So, I noticed you’re not drinking alcohol?” Kami sidles up to Courtney, Kari right beside her, effectively cornering her near the living room wall away from the rest of the group.

“Huh?” Courtney answers, head tilting in confusion as she tries to work out why they would care.

“Oh, don’t play clueless. There a reason for you to avoid it, hey?” Kari grins. Courtney remains confused, for a moment, about to ask for further clarification before she realises what they’re insinuating and rolls her eyes.

“Oh, god, no. I just don’t like beer and Dad never has good cider,” she waves them off, “why the hell would I be pregnant, guys? There’s no way. Think that’s way more of a possibility for you, Kami.”

Turning it back on her sister works: Kami blushes, quickly pushed by Kari into admitting they do plan to add to her existing crew of three children and given the youngest is now five years old, it’s about time to try for the next.

The warm conversation pairs well with free-flowing drinks (both alcoholic and otherwise, given the amount of parents in attendance) and pre-lunch snacks, filling the space with a constant hum of activity. The other two adults rejoin everyone inside after making sure the kids are under control and playing nicely together. Not long later, Kenn raises the suggestion of getting photos while the kids are distracted.

It’s a tradition, of sorts, for the Millers: they mark the progress of their family through the years with annual photos in front of the Christmas tree, wherever they happen to be gathering. It subtly marks the progress of their lives, through new partners and new kids gradually increasing the size of the group. They’ll get some with the kids later, of course – once they’ve expended enough energy to make it more plausible they can get all of them to stand still at once – but they start as just the adults. All seven Miller siblings are up first, Clarke and Conrad disrupting the first handful of attempts by giving each other well-timed bunny ears. They add Kenn in for the next photo, before all the partners are invited to join. As always, Shayne takes the phone camera in use – he thinks it’s Kami’s although he isn’t sure – to step out in front of the group, everyone else now required in the photo.

It’s Conrad’s girlfriend’s first time at their family Christmas (they’d only been together about a month last year, so he felt it was too soon), but everyone quickly pulls her in with warm smiles and laughter.

“C’mon, get the single sisters together,” Kari jokes, arm settling loosely around Courtney’s shoulder as everyone looks to Shayne to take the photo.

Shayne watches Courtney’s face drop, for a moment, before she quickly pulls on an artificial grin, more reminiscent of what he’s used to seeing during shoots at work than anything else. He gives a mildly exaggerated laugh as his attention is taken by Kenn messing with KC’s hair, tapping away at the screen to take a series of photos. He has to make sure he captures the true insanity of the extended Miller family, alongside the serious shot they can use in photo frames or whatever it is they do.

He hands the phone back to Kami when she reaches for it, almost everyone crowding around to flick through the numerous photos. He quickly notices the absence of one particular voice, though, stepping back from the group slightly and glancing around rapidly to look for her.

Courtney remains standing where she had been in the photo, just off to the side of the tree, only now instead of Kari’s arm around her shoulder she has her own arms wrapped tightly around herself, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. She meets his eyes for a second, before turning and walking straight out of the room. Shayne glances around again, confirming everyone’s distraction, before he too slips out of the room, following her.

He doesn’t see her enter, but he sees the closed bathroom door and figures she has locked herself inside. He taps softly on the door, ensuring no one in the living room could overhear.

“Court, it’s me, can I come in?” he requests, voice also staying low. She doesn’t say anything, but she moves to the door and pulls on the hand to let it unlock and fall open. Shayne steps in, immediately locking the door behind himself before he turns to face her.

Courtney doesn’t meet his eyes, standing silently in the centre of the room with bowed head and hunched shoulders, arms crossed tightly in front of herself seemingly making her appear as small as possible.

“Court-“ he starts.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, before he can continue.

“Hey, hey, no, you don’t need to apologise,” he reassures, taking the two steps forward to gently pry her crossed arms apart and pull her into a hug. She doesn’t resist in the slightest, instead burying her face in the crook of his neck as she wraps her own arms around his waist, tears increasing and dampening the collar of his shirt.

“It’s- it’s s-s-stupid, I know this is what we- just what we do but I just-“ she stutters, sharp sobs cutting through her mumbled statements against his neck. He holds her tighter. “I’m sick of it. I shouldn’t be alone in those photos. I’m not single. You- you should be in the photo, not taking it, Shayne.”

“I know, love. I know, it sucks, I hate it too. I just don’t know what else we can do while still making sure there’s no way anyone could ever...” he trails off, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as he does, leaving the rest of his statement unsaid – because of course they don’t think anyone in their family would ever out them publicly, but what if they lost their phone and someone else did? Or a kid did accidentally… or one of their family did do it?

“Everyone else gets to have their partners be part of it- part of the fam-family, and they’ve progressed through so much, and I’m just- just- nothing, it’s not real,” she cries, pressing tighter against Shayne, taking a deep, shuddering breath to stabilise her tone, “three fucking years. We can’t even live together. We can’t be in fucking photos- I love you so much but I’m just so- this sucks and I don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah. It’s... yeah. I don’t know either, Courtney. You’re everything to me but if us being together is just upsetting you...” his own voice cracks as he speaks, again trailing off without speaking the possibility they never want but both know is becoming increasingly present, unsaid.

Courtney pulls back from him slowly, reluctantly stepping away and wary eyes meeting his as she walks back until she hits the opposite wall, sliding down to sit on the floor as her back presses up against the cool tiles. She speaks what they’re both afraid to say.

“I don’t want to break up with you, Shayne. It isn’t being together that upsets me, it’s… that we can’t be together in every way I want to be,” her voice is certain, although it wavers, and it still causes anxiety to spike in his mind.

“What way do you want?” He asks, although his tone comes out more as pleading.

“I want everything with you, Shayne. I want you beside me in family photos, I want to live with you, I want to be able to do at least some PDA with you without caring who’s around. I want to live my life with you, grow old with you, maybe have kids with you or if not that just be the cool aunt and uncle forever… I want to marry you,” her voice becomes stronger, more emphatic and more certain as she speaks. Shayne sighs deeply, eyes dropping from her gaze only so he can wander over and slide down to the floor beside her.

“I want that too, Court. I love you – I’d spend my life jumping through hoops to keep us quiet if it meant I could spend that life with you. But I… don’t know if it’s possible to have all that but keep quiet. I-“ he pauses, one hand reaching to the side to clasp hers. “I don’t say this to pressure you, at all. But… I’ve already bought a ring for you. I’ve been struggling to work out when and how to ask, but… I want to. I think we’re ready for that, but then, I don’t know what that actually means, because I guess you can’t actually wear an engagement ring.”

“I want you to ask me. And I want to wear an engagement ring. Shayne, I… I’m sick of hiding. I get that everything I want – we want – probably isn’t possible if we stay quiet. But instead of breaking up… our other solution might be to let people know. I’m tired and frustrated and I love you too much to say I don’t and I just- fuck it. You’re so important to me, I’m done pretending you aren’t,” she speaks with emphatic certainty, tone quickly falling back into hesitation as she adds, “unless you’d… prefer to stay quiet.”

He quickly shifts around to sit in front of her, deep gaze reassuring her he wants the same things she does, too, as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box.

“I- when I thought I might ask today, I didn’t think I’d do it while both of us were sitting on the bathroom floor crying considering whether we should break up. But I still love you to pieces, even when things are hard like this and we need to work through them. I know I want to spend my life by your side, loving and supporting you through everything no matter what it is. Courtney, my love, will you marry me?” Shayne asks, flipping open the box.

He watches her eyes fill with tears again as she gasps lightly and her eyes flick rapidly between his own and the ring. He holds his breath, but he soon finds her nodding rapidly before soft hands land on his cheeks and pull his lips to hers in a firm kiss.

“Yes, Shayne. I’ll marry you,” she finally finds her voice after thirty seconds of disorganised kisses, and he breathes a noticeably sigh of relief as she leans forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders, settling into a hug despite their awkward positioning, cross-legged on the floor, facing each other.

“Do you want to wear the ring, or nah?” he queries, his own hands running soft patterns across her back. She pulls back, answering silently with her left hand held out. She grins widely as he slides the ring onto her finger.

“I’m not kidding, Shayne. I want to stop hiding. Immediately. I’m over it,” she reinforces, and Shayne nods slowly, not able to wipe the soft smile off his face.

“Okay. I’m over it, too. It’s going to be a fucking ride seeing what happens now, but… We can do it. Together,” he affirms, Courtney responding by prompting him to shift beside her again so she can more comfortably pull him into a tight hug. He returns the sentiment, pressing against her and massaging gentle patterns where his hands loop around her. She sighs in content, both of their tears finally ceasing as they sit calmly together.

“Courtney? Shayne?” Kari calls, her loud voice at the bathroom door some five minutes later jarring them out of their soft embrace. “You good? Not like you two to disappear off alone to make out…”

“Not making out, Kari,” Courtney shoots back with an exasperated sigh. They both stand up, and she reluctantly walks over to the door to unlock it. Kari gets the message, stepping into the room and – thankfully – closing the door behind herself again. She looks up, visibly shocked by the teary half-smile, half-distressed look on both their faces and how closely they’re holding each other.

“What’s- what happened?” She pushes. Courtney looks up to Shayne, silently pleading for him to at least start answering… something.

“It’s-“ he starts, immediately pausing to take a steadying breath before he continues, “everything we have to do to hide is a fucking lot, Kari, and the photos kind of… hit badly. It basically stops us from progressing our relationship how we want to and it sucks so much. I don’t like pretending Court isn’t the most important person in my life but then we have to do stuff like leave me out of the photos and-“

“I know you were just joking,” Courtney picks up, when he cuts himself off, looking pointedly at Kari as she speaks, “but I’m not single and I hate pretending I am. Everyone else gets to have their partners and families in those photos and be part of the change over time but I’m just… there. Nothing. It isn’t real for me. I’m over it- we’re both over it. Our two options were just… break up, stop trying to make this work somehow, or stop hiding anymore. And you can probably guess which one we both prefer.”

“I’d hope it’s not hiding anymore? I know you won’t even really act like a couple in front of us, but- I can see how good you are for each other,” Kari replies, cautious, her tone softer than before. The couple opposite her both nod.

“Yeah. I love Shayne. I’m going to marry him one day,” Courtney starts, unsubtly glancing towards her own left hand with a sly smile, “we’re in this to build a life together, whatever that may look like, and we think it might look a little less hidden now.”

“Wait- is that an engagement ring? Were you wearing that earlier and no one even noticed?” Kari pushes, eyes wide as she reaches out to grip Courtney’s left hand and pull it up so she can examine the ring more closely. Courtney would be pissed about the grabbing of her arm, usually, but given the situation she can’t stop her wide grin, as Shayne laughs gently and sends a wave of affection through her chest.

“It is, and no, I wasn’t. He asked just now in here while we were talking about what we wanted to do. Which, for both of us, is get married,” Courtney explains, glancing up to meet his eyes and leaning her head onto his shoulder in comfort as he gives her a soft, affectionate smile.

“I didn’t intend to ask like that, I- was tempted to ask in front of everyone later. But I had it with me to ask today, and we were talking about it, and I just-“ Shayne cuts himself off lightly, supplying the remainder of his point as he turns and presses a soft kiss to the side of Courtney’s head, arms holding her tightly.

“Can’t say I’ve known of anyone else that got engaged in a bathroom while upset about something and it was a positive thing, but in this case – yeah, I’m happy for you guys, even if it’s a little weird. I always hoped you two would be in it for life, I couldn’t think of a better person for my baby sister to marry,” Kari congratulates them, turning teasing as she finishes. Courtney rolls her eyes.

“Not baby sister, just your sister. But – thanks, Kari.”

“Thanks, Kari,” Shayne adds, simply, “I guess we gotta head back out there, hey?”

“Yeah. I saw you guys run off, everyone else just noticed you were missing and I pretended to go look for you when they did. You’re about to have to do a complete reversal on how you normally are and tell everyone this- you up for it?” Kari challenges. Courtney nods rapidly.

“Yeah. I’ve hit a ‘fuck it, I don’t care’ point about hiding. I’m not letting go of Shayne for the rest of today,” she affirms, her point made clear when the three start walking out of the bathroom back to the living room, and Shayne and Courtney keep their tight embrace.

Everyone turns to look at them when they step back in, conversation gradually dropping to quiet. Kenn goes to wave everyone off, tell them to leave them alone, but Courtney quickly holds up her hand to stop him, taking a deep breath and gripping Shayne’s side tighter.

“The hiding stuff sucks, guys. I know we- even hide in front of you all a lot but we just... we’re over it. That’s not how we actually are but it’s holding us back from what we want to be. So... we’re not going to hide any more. At all,” Courtney pauses for a moment, before quickly adding, “also, we’re engaged.”

“Oh my god engaged?” Kathryn enthuses, rushing over to them. It settles the room back into normal conversation, although everyone is unsubtly waiting to approach them. Kami and Kathryn congratulate them, first, Kami pulling Courtney into a tight hug.

“I’m glad you aren’t hiding anymore. You two deserve to be happy, not limited,” she whispers, Courtney nodding carefully when Kami pulls back. She immediately reaches out to take Shayne’s hand again, attention shifting when she sees her Dad give Shayne a clap on the back.

“You finally asked? Fantastic, Shayne,” he grins, and Courtney raises an eyebrow.

“Finally?” she queries.

“I may have talked to your Dad like… more than six months ago,” Shayne admits, Courtney laughing in happiness.

“You’re so sweet,” she tells him, hesitating for a moment before twisting to press a brief kiss against his cheek. She mentally makes note of the fact it’s the first time they’ve kissed in front of anyone at all.

“You did a good job with the hiding. I didn’t even know you were together, I thought Shayne was just here as a friend or something...” Conrad’s girlfriend comments, Shayne quickly nodding.

“Yeah, we usually gave it a year or so before anyone new finds out... sorry, it’s all just... an abundance of caution, because of the potential public factor with our work,” he explains, but she quickly waves the apology off, telling them she understands.

“So when you say no more hiding... none at all? Public?” Clarke confirms, both Courtney and Shayne nodding.

“I think it’s going to go on Instagram today. Don’t know how, exactly, but... we’ll work something out,” she shrugs.

“We will.”

“Well, I mean, I think there’s a photo we need to retake so it has everyone in it that should be there,” KC speaks up. Shayne feels himself blush.

“I mean it’s- don’t want to cause any difficulty doing it all again,” he replies, embarrassed.

“Nope, no problem at all, c’mon- Dad, take my phone,” Kami agrees, quickly handing her phone over and gathering everyone back towards the tree. Shayne laughs softly, hand tight in Courtney’s as, for the first time ever, he moves in front of the tree too.

“Well since I’m the odd one out now I’m in the middle,” Kari calls out, Courtney flicking her arm in response.

“You’re the middle child, dude, you’re always in the middle,” she rebuts, arm sliding around Shayne’s waist as his settles around her shoulders. They all turn to face Kenn, this time, energy just as high for this series of photos as the first.

“You know, you did just get engaged…” he starts, as everyone else starts moving away again, “I think that’s worthy of some photos of just you two. Especially if you’re going public now, with Courtney’s Instagram obsession.”

“Not an obsession, Dad, it’s part of my job – but yes, yes, I think that’s a good idea,” Courtney agrees, laughing at herself lightly (along with Shayne) as Kami steps forward to take back her phone, reminding their Dad that she is a much better iPhone photographer. He doesn’t argue.

They take a series of photos, some blatantly flashing Courtney’s left hand front and centre and others a little more subtle, although in all of them they are pressed closer together than they’ve probably ever been on camera.

“You want to do a kiss one? Don’t have to, of course, don’t know if you guys are absolutely no PDA anyway or if it was just for the hiding but…” Kami suggests.

“Kissing for engagement photos is definitely okay PDA,” Shayne confirms, turning his head to meet Courtney in a soft kiss, her left hand cupping his cheek. It’s the first time he feels the cool metal of the ring against his cheek, and it makes him smile warmly when he pulls back.

“Love you,” Courtney whispers, and he returns the sentiment.

“Here, send everything to yourself,” Kami hands her phone over to Courtney, when she and Shayne are no longer lost in their own world. Courtney does just that, Shayne leaning close to her to look over her shoulder at the pictures.

“So... we Instagram one of those?” Shayne murmurs, Courtney lightly shrugging.

“Maybe. But later. I think I want to start with a group photo where it’s not a big thing but then... get more obvious,” she tells him, Shayne humming in approval.

They reluctantly separate just a little, Shayne stepping outside with KC and Kathryn to herd all the kids inside for Christmas lunch. It’s an effort, but they manage, Shayne crouching down and pretending to be a monster chasing them in as Kathryn physically pulls her youngest away from a toy and carries her inside.

The adults collectively help the kids get their food first, parents helping their crew remember what they actually like eating - “Jackson, no, you hate turkey,” Kathryn reminds him, when he tries to grab a large slice - and fill plates they then take over to the kids’ table.

The adults serve their own lunch next, and their seating ends up thoroughly mixed up on a first-come first-served basis, but Courtney and Shayne still manage to nab seats beside each other.

“So when you’re not hiding you two are all over each other, huh?” Clarke jokes. Courtney kicks him under the table.

“Sitting together is hardly all over each other. Plus like… we just got engaged, dude,” she defends.

“Wait, so I probably assumed wrong, but I thought you only just told us you were engaged now and it was like… a few days ago or something. It was just now?” Clarke clarifies, eyes wide.

“Shayne literally just proposed when they disappeared off to the bathroom before,” Kari confirms, taking the seat diagonally opposite Clarke, on Courtney’s opposite side to Shayne, “although they swear they didn’t run off to make out-“

“Shut up, Kari. We didn’t run off anywhere, we went to talk because the photo stuff upset us,” Shayne brushes her off, quietly glad when the conversation ends there, Kenn grabbing everyone’s – or the adults’, at least – attention to say grace before they begin eating.

Their Christmas lunch passes, a comfortable split between bouts of calm conversation and content silence as everyone eats. Some of the younger kids are set down for naps in the upstairs bedrooms after, the older kids moving to play a little more quietly in the living room while the adults pitch in to clean up from their meal.

“Can iPhones do self timer photos?” KC queries, to the group milling between the kitchen and dining room as they clean up.

“Yeah, they can, I’ve used them for Instagram stuff - why?” Courtney replies, quickly jumping out of the way as Conrad walks through with a precariously balanced stack of water glasses.

“Everyone gotta be in the big group photo now,” KC reminds her.

Said big group photo ends up being the last thing they do before guests start leaving. They have a quieter couple of hours after cleaning up from lunch, Courtney spending much of the time sitting on the living room sofa showing off her ring to rotating groups of people as Shayne remains close beside her. KC and his family are the first to need to leave to travel home, other parents rushing to wake up their younger sleeping children to pose with everyone in front of the Christmas tree while everyone is still here.

The shot they end up with is far from perfect - a couple of the kids aren’t looking at the camera, and Kari is mid-laugh with KC’s wife, but it’s real, and it’s everyone together.

“I think I just want to Instagram that,” Courtney muses, looking at it on Kami’s phone a few minutes later, after they’ve said goodbye to KC and family.

The chain of leaving quickens from there: Clarke and his girlfriend are next, followed by Kami and family. Shayne and Courtney decide to make their own exit at the same time as Conrad and his girlfriend, waving goodbye as they climb into Courtney’s Fiat.

“So... are we going to move in together somewhere now? Because I don’t care which of our places we go to but I’m going to be sleeping in the same bed as you tonight,” Courtney tells him, as she presses the button to start the car.

“Your place is bigger,” Shayne nods, so she starts driving in the direction of hers.

“You mean that as a preference just for tonight or moving in?” She asks.

“I mean... it’s your apartment, but both?” He replies, with a tinge of nerves.

“No, no, it’s our apartment. Move in with me whenever, but I want to live with you,” she reminds him, glancing over to see him grin.

“Okay. I want to live with you too. We’re just going to take a bunch of huge overdue steps in our relationship at once, huh?” he jokes. Courtney laughs.

“I guess we are, but it feels less like big new things and more just... fulfilling what we both wish was already happening. I think?”

“Definitely.”

They both quickly end up on the sofa, Shayne leaning half-sideways, head pressed against Courtney’s chest. She flicks through photos on her phone one-handed, the other tracing patterns where it rests against the back of his shoulder blade.

“It’s not exactly blatant, but I know they’ll see it anyway - do I just post the group shot?” Courtney muses.

“You could always do that now, and something more obvious later,” Shayne suggests, “and I wanna post something too.”

“That works,” she agrees, flicking to Instagram and applying a few minor edits to get the colours right on their big group shot.

‘Merry Christmas from a lot of Millers’ she captions, both Courtney and Shayne pressing closer together when she hits post.

They give it a few hours, remaining in their own little bubble for a quiet, internet-free evening. It’s when they’re about to go to bed, curled sleepily against each other on her sofa, that Shayne reaches for both of their phones from the coffee table.

“You still wanna post something more direct? Because I kind of do,” he admits, Courtney nodding gently against him.

“We got those ones of just us,” she muses, flicking through the photos she saved from Kami’s phone and pausing on the final, “I think I want to post the kissing one. Make it abundantly clear.”

“I think I wanna take a stupid selfie with you right now and use that,” Shayne admits, Courtney laughing as she gestures towards his phone to prompt him to do just that. They’re both softly smiling for the photo, affection clear as they remain curled together.

He adds it as the second photo on his Instagram post, the first a plain black square.

‘Courtney and I have not been secretly dating for a few years, I did not propose to her today and I am not completely in love with her.

SIKE!!!!’ he types out his caption, laughing softly at himself as he does. It gets Courtney’s attention.

“What are you- oh my god, you idiot,” she laughs loudly as she finishes reading over his shoulder.

“You like?”

“Yes, it’s perfect,” she confirms, and Shayne hits post.

‘If the last post wasn’t clear enough... this cute idiot boy is mine and he gave me a ring so I get to keep him forever!’ her caption is equally jokey, a little sarcastic, and she posts hers within seconds of him.

“Hey, Court?” He murmurs, phones discarded to the side after their posts are done.

“Mm?” She replies, matching his soft tone as she glances to the side to meet his eyes.

“I love you more than I could ever describe. You are everything,” he tells her, reverently. It makes her blush, hand gripping his shirt tightly as she presses closer.

“I love you endlessly too, Shayne. I’m glad for everything that happened today,” she returns the sentiment, relishing in the loving smile he gives that only she gets to see.


	8. Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only write drama when I'm angry and I was angry the other week so uh... this happened. It may sound like a legitimate commentary on shipping or things that happened in the pretaped board AFs, but it is not, it's purely made up plot stuff, I just jumped off the idea of the pretaped board AF streams since they were the most recent Smosh content I'd watched when I wrote it.
> 
> So hey, have a little drama (I promise I'll be back to my regularly scheduled fluff oneshots next time)

“Hey, hey, you did good! It’s fine!” Courtney reassures him, gripping his arm closest to her with both hands.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” he shoots back, almost exasperated. He makes no move to react to her hands on him, as always. He keeps his face straight, gaze moving to react to something Damien’s said as he pushes the burning in his arm where she _keeps touching him_ to the back of his mind.

They may not be live, exactly, but these 3-hour fake-live streams aren’t going to be edited, so they may as well be.

Much to his chagrin, though, it doesn’t seem to phase her. She leans her head on his shoulder when she laughs at something Ian said, she hits his arm but lets her hand hold the spot she hits when he makes stupid jokes, she glances to the side every time she makes a joke to look for his reaction and he can’t stop himself from, even briefly, glancing back and meeting her eyes before they both rapidly look away.

He usually lets it slide – it’s how they are anyway, so why is it a problem on camera? Just this time, he’s already tired and frustrated from their pre-break streaming schedule, and the last game they play is full of gross inappropriate stuff that forces him to make a bunch of sex jokes he’s not entirely comfortable making (plus she’s blatantly and openly uncomfortable with it all, literally hiding from the cameras in her new position diagonally opposite him, beside Sarah, and that ticks him off more than a little too). He’s tired, and grumpy, and-

“And you wonder why people fucking ship us,” he grumbles, only thirty seconds after the cameras are cut, everyone else still in the room as she gravitates back to his side.

“The cameras cut, idiot,” she shoots back, tone light as she throws an arm around his shoulder. He shrugs it off.

“You know what I’m talking about, Courtney, you were all over me the whole time you were beside me-“ he snaps, tone terse and sharp as she steps back.

“Oh I’m fucking sorry I _touched your arm_ , like happens literally all the fucking time and means absolutely nothing, Shayne,” she argues, defensive, “I thought you didn’t give a shit about the shipping? Sure seems like you do.”

“I don’t give a shit, I don’t look anyway, but you do and you always complain about it but then you go and pull all this shit that you know looks like there’s something there-“

“But there isn’t anything there. We know that. We’re not together. Nothing there. So what does it fucking matter?” Courtney cuts him off.

“Guys…” Sarah steps in, as Shayne gives an exasperated sigh and runs his hand up his face.

“Whatever,’ he mutters, stalking out of the room.

“Like that fucker doesn’t do shit too,” Courtney grumbles, turning to the back wall to try and find the bottle of water she’d discarded back there not long before the end of the stream.

“You two need to sort your shit out, not argue on set,” Ian tells her, sternly. She rolls her eyes.

“There’s nothing to sort out, he’s just being crabby about nothing.”

“Sure,” Damien speaks up, clearly disbelieving.

“Oh, shut it Damien, I don’t know what bullshit he’s told you-“

“Oh, no, he’s frustratingly silent on literally anything about you, I’ve been trying to get him to talk forever and he won’t,” he shoots back.

“Whatever, there’s nothing to say anyway,” she mumbles, herself turning to walk out of the studio back to the office. It’s their last shoot for the day, and she is quite ready to rapidly exit the workplace and take her newfound Shayne-induced shitty mood home. She figures she can indulge the annoyance with a shitty movie and some junk food, given her plans were leaning that direction for the evening anyway.

“Courtney,” Shayne’s voice, still tense, interrupts her as she steps into the largely empty office, although she knows the others from the shoot are probably close behind her. He reaches out and grabs her forearm, as if sensing her plan to turn and immediately walk away from him before it fully forms in her mind.

“Oh no, Shayne, you touched my arm,” her voice drips with sarcasm. She wrenches her arm away from him when he sighs and pulls her in the direction of the kitchen, feet planted firmly in place.

“Courtney, please, I need to talk to you. Privately,” he tells her, glancing over her shoulder at everyone else from the shoot re-entering the office space.

“Hey, it was you that started some bullshit in front of everyone, dude. I’m going home,” she brushes him off, turning to quickly pack everything she needs to take into her bag and walking straight out of the office.

He doesn’t try and follow her, instead sighing heavily as he moves to back up his own things.

“You two…” Ian starts, pausing opposite Shayne’s desk, looking at him over the computer monitors between them.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. She’s just-“ he cuts himself off, shaking his head.

“HR says it’d be better from a work point of view for you two to sort your shit out and get together or whatever than to fight about it at work,” Lisa pipes up, from the desk over the side of the room in their little administrative department’s section.

“We’re not _not_ together because of work or whatever. We aren’t together because we don’t both want to be together, it’s legitimately not a thing,” Shayne shoots back, “we’re finished for the day, yeah? I’m going home.”

“Yeah, we’re done. See you tomorrow,” Sarah confirms, waving him off through the awkward air settled over the room.

By the time he steps out of the office to approach his car, hers has well and truly disappeared from their parking lot. He pauses for thirty seconds after sitting into his drivers’ seat, hands on the steering wheel as he squeezes his eyes closed and lets his head tip back against the headrest in frustration.

He wants to follow her, he wants to make her talk to him, but he eventually decides otherwise, slowly reversing out of his park and driving straight back to his own apartment. It’s not the slightest bit unlike them to turn up at each other’s apartments unannounced – they live close by LA standards, anyway – but he figures when she’s explicitly rejected talking to him, it’d be a little douchey.

He gives it an hour after he arrives home: he pulls together something to eat, he tidies up a little, and he keeps his mind occupied until the moment the clock on his phone hits 60 minutes after his arrival, and he assumes, about the same after she got home. He pulls open his message chain with her, finger sliding across the screen as he types and deletes words until he crafts a message he’s happy with.

“We need to talk, Court. I’m sorry I snapped at you on set. But we need to talk. I didn’t want to be an ass and follow you home or whatever since you didn’t want to talk to me earlier but… I want to come over. Now.” He sends.

“Kinda expected you to turn up at my place unannounced tonight, but thanks for the warning, I guess,” she texts back, almost immediately. It doesn’t tell him much, directly, but he reads between the lines – she would’ve straight-up said so if she really didn’t want him there, so he quickly grabs his keys and throws on a jacket as he steps back out towards his car.

He hesitates when he reaches her apartment door, hand raised awkwardly to knock. She opens the door before he has a chance to actually convince himself to do so, saying nothing as she steps aside and walks back over to sit on her sofa. He locks the door behind him after he steps in, stepping out of his shoes before he too walks further into the apartment, sitting up the opposite end of the sofa from her.

“Do we really need to do this again, now, Shayne? What is there to talk about that we haven’t already?” she sighs. He runs a hand through his hair.

“I know, Court, I just…” he looks up at the ceiling, for a moment, before forcing himself to meet her eyes, “we both know there isn’t nothing there, and maybe it isn’t enough to really be anything, but I just… I don’t know what we’re doing anymore.”

“I don’t know what we’re doing either but I just live with that, because are we really ever going to work it out? Is arguing about shit on set or talking through this stupid nothing all over again really going to change anything when you keep saying there’s something, but you don’t actually want anything to happen, and it’s kind of nothing anyway?” she debates.

“I never said I didn’t want anything to happen,” he shakes his head.

“Last time we talked you went on a date with someone else like, three days later. I know you don’t want me, Shayne, and I don’t think you should anyway, we wouldn’t work. So why do you keep pulling this shit, making a big deal out of things that are just… nothing?”

“I’m the only person you’re that touchy with, Courtney, you’re so goddamn obvious encouraging me over everyone else and leaning on me and touching me-“

“Okay, so I like you, whatever, it’s not like you don’t know that, but there’s a big difference between that and anything actually happening, given you clearly don’t like me since you have such a problem with this shit, and as I said, we’d never fucking work anyway-“

“I give you way more attention than anyone else, Courtney. And I know I’m not touchy on camera as much, but I am off camera. I don’t have a problem with you being like that to me – I like it, you know that, but I just… you hate the shipping, okay? I know that, and I figure it’s because you think there’s nothing with us anyway, but maybe there’s just a stupid part of me that’s trying to tone down stuff on camera to protect you from the shipping stuff or something because I lo-, I don’t fucking know,” he ends his statement in a mutter, abruptly stopping himself from finishing his statement.

“You know why the shipping bugs me? Because it’s what I can’t fucking have, because we’re over here arguing about whether there’s something or not so there probably never will be, and you just almost said that but I know you fucking don’t, Shayne, I’m _me_ -“ She snaps, but he cuts her off.

“No, no, I’m not saying that in the middle of an argument, it’s not fair to either of us. But you know why I’m scared of committing to this, Courtney? Because every time we talk about it, you just come up with every reason why it won’t work, and it makes me think I like you a whole lot more than you like me – no, I’m not saying it, but you know how I feel about you, and then you tell me there isn’t anything between us, but you’re constantly all over me, and I just-“

“You’ve been my fake therapist enough, Shayne. You know I shouldn’t be dating anyone, I’m fucking bad at relationships and shit, you deserve better,” she reminds him. He sighs.

“Neither of us are perfect, Courtney. No one is. But I- there’s a point where there has to be someone you date anyway, and you try and work through your shit together, and evidently you don’t want that to be me so it’s not even relevant that I would happily deal with your shit as I always have, but you can’t just hide from dating forever,” Shayne stops, eyes shooting back up to the ceiling in exasperation, “we aren’t getting anywhere tonight. I should go.”

He looks to her for a response, but she simply stares at him blankly, remaining silent as he stands from the couch and walks to the door, pulling his shoes back on.

“See you at work tomorrow, I guess,” he mumbles, turning back to see her still looking blankly at him when he pauses with his hand on the door.

She keeps her gaze locked on him as he turns back, shoulders heaving in an obvious sigh as he twists the handle and steps out, giving up yet again. She expects the thread of annoyance dominating her thoughts to stay constant, but the second the door closes behind him, it snaps.

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself, feeling regretful tears cloud her eyes as she jumps off the couch and paces to the door, pulling it open with force to quietly call into the dark outside her apartment, “Shayne. Shayne, come back.”

He hears her, being only five steps from the apartment, although he doesn’t think she can actually see him, given he’s stepped into the shadows around a corner from her front door. It still makes him pause. He wants to ignore her, to keep walking, to make her deal with whatever bullshit she’s pulling now herself.

But he straight up can’t fucking say no to her, can he?

“What?” he replies, voice stern as he turns back around the corner, arms crossed in front of himself. He likes to think he looks challenging, but he knows she’ll see the anxiety behind his façade.

“Please come back inside, I need you to-“ she tells him. He can barely make out her features, Courtney lit only from the light in her apartment behind her, with none of the outside lights near her apartment being switched on. He can still hear the tears in her voice, and it still makes him react more than he’d like.

He reluctantly uncrosses his arms, striding back towards the apartment as she steps back to let him in, holding the door open for him. She lets it fall closed behind them, visibly hesitating for a handful of seconds before she steps forward and wraps her arms around his upper back.

Shayne wants to push her off, to demand she explain what she’s doing, but his heart is louder than his mind. He wraps his own arms around her shoulders, feeling her crying against his shoulder. He gives her two minutes of silent tears before he pushes for an explanation.

“What are you doing, Courtney? You know I can’t say no to you, but it kind of fucking hurts when you rubbish everything between us and then turn around and go to me for comfort,” his tone is some mix of terse and vulnerable. She holds him tighter.

“I know. I’m sorry. I- god, I don’t know how to say this,” she mutters, pulling back only to pull him back over to the couch. He sits the same end he was earlier, but she sits in the middle reaching for his hand.

“Courtney…” he trails off, voice strained.

“I know. I know I… haven’t been fair to you, Shayne. I know. But I… I’ve let go of stuff with you so many goddamn times, because it’s fucking terrifying, how I feel about you. And I know I’ve got mad at you for doing exactly the same thing, I guess, but I just- I can’t let you go again,” she squeezes his hand, voice wavering with clear anxiety. He can’t interpret what she’s trying to say, and he’s still hurt, but he squeezes her hand comfortingly in response anyway. It must be the right response, because she looks up, eyes meeting his with depth and certainty.

“I-“ he goes to speak, but she holds up a hand.

“You don’t have to say it, but I will. I love you, Shayne. I hide behind insecurity and arguing away things because I’m scared, because I feel like if I admit it and we actually try dating or something, I’m just going to fuck up and lose you but I- I do love you, in a way I’ve never felt about anyone else,” she admits.

“I’m scared, too, Courtney. I’m- still scared one day you’ll turn around and realise I’m not worthy of loving. But I… yeah, I love you too. And I… I really do want to be with you, even if we’re both scared, even if we gotta accept that it’s not always going to be perfect – I’m not going to run away at the first issue, Court, we can work through things _together_ ,” he emphasises.

“I’m just… scared that I’ll run away at the first issue,” she admits, “I don’t want to, but I just- you mean so goddamn much to me, dude, but I don’t fucking trust myself.”

“I know, but I know you’re working on it. And I mean… if you don’t want to, then nothing changes, we just go back to normal knowing how we both feel. But I…” he trails off.

“You want something to change?” she prompts, watching him nod slowly. She nods, too. “I can dive deep into my insecurities and anxiety and whatever but I… don’t think I could live with myself if I turned down an opportunity with you. So… yeah. Maybe I need us to take it a little slow, and maybe everything isn’t going to be perfect, but… you aren’t just a friend to me. I want you to be more.”

“Are we just going to start with a vague kind of… maybe we’re dating thing? That’s okay, if that’s what you’re comfortable with, I’m okay with that, but I’d be okay with labels too,” he admits.

“No, I need certainty. Labels are… good. I want to be able to call you my boyfriend,” she tells him, and he nods.

“Then you can, and I am.”

“Can I hug you?” she requests, voice turning shy, but he quickly gives the affirmative.

“Yeah. And we’ll take things slow, so we’re both comfortable, but also… I’m not going to try too hard not to fall asleep with you on your couch tonight,” he admits. Courtney laughs.

“I was going to watch a trash movie and eat junk food tonight because I felt gross fighting with you – want to make it trash movie and cuddles instead?” she offers.

“Perfect,” he accepts, “I’ll even let you make me watch Grease 2, if you want.”

“I’ve made you watch it before,” she muses, Shayne blushing as he lets his hand gently grip her opposite arm, where it falls from his arm loose around her shoulder.

“Sometimes I get so distracted watching you enjoy your favourite movies that I forget to actually watch,” he cringes at his own admission, pushing back into the couch. She follows him, though, snuggling closer as she turns her head to rest sideways against his head.

“You’re cute,” Courtney mumbles, “stupid, but cute.”


	9. Power of Attorney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to sign a whole heap of documents the other day to be executor of someone in my immediate family's will and then this idea happened and then it was 8000-odd words. I don't actually know how legal will arrangements work in America, but let's just leave it as a plot device, huh?

Courtney knows who the knock on her door is before she even opens it, bounding quickly across the apartment as soon as she hears it, leaving the journal she had been writing in sitting open on the coffee table. She pulls open the door with some enthusiasm, greeted, just as she thought, by Shayne holding a carton of her favourite cider.

“You up for hanging out?” he asks.

“Of course,” Courtney grins, stepping aside to invite him in, “but it’s your turn to buy dinner, I did the other day.”

“I know, I know, there is pizza due here in a bit – and yes, I got your stupid pineapple and green pepper bullshit,” he confirms as he wanders through into her kitchen to place two ciders in the freezer and two in the fridge.

“What if I’d said I didn’t want to hang out?” she raises an eyebrow, faux challenging him as he flops down on her couch beside where she had settled. He laughs.

“You always want to hang out with my fantastic ass,” he jokes.

“Your ass may be fantastic, shame about the personality though,” she shoots back, deadpanned. He puts on a pout for a moment before his face contorts back into laughter.

“I mean, for real, usually if you say you don’t want to hang out it means you’re dealing with some shit and I figured you’d appreciate pizza either way,” he muses, and Courtney nods.

“Yes, yes, I’m a predictable bitch. How was Goldbergs today?” she relents, settling them into a comfortable conversation that twists slowly between their days at their separate workplaces (not that they didn’t also have lengthy conversations about their joint workdays at Smosh on those days), politics, and Courtney’s latest family drama.

“Kari actually texted me for advice on how to talk football with some guy the other day,” Shayne muses, “I reminded her she definitely doesn’t like football guys and also I’m the worst person to ask for dating advice.”

“Glad she spreads the stupid questions out a little more instead of just asking me, I guess,” Courtney shrugs, “you text her much?”

“Occasionally, I guess. Don’t ever really go out of my way to contact her unless I need to dig up something on you,” he grins, Courtney rolling her eyes before nodding slightly.

“It’s a shame I can’t do the same with any of your family. Your Mum doesn’t give me anything I can make fun of you for, just the occasional holiday greeting…” Courtney trails off.

Shayne starts to reply, but he is quickly interrupted by a knock at the door. He pushes himself up off the couch and wanders over to answer it, accepting the pizza delivery and tipping the driver.

“Get your hell pizza while it’s hot, I guess,” Shayne tells her as he sets the pizza down at her small dining table, Courtney grabbing both their drinks off the coffee table as she moves to join him, setting his down in front of him.

“You’ve never even tried my pizza, you can’t knock something you haven’t ever tried,” she debates, taking a bite of her pizza before continuing, “and don’t say the dominos mukbang, it was cold anyway then and you immediately spit it out.”

“I forgot about that actually – but I mean, pineapple and cheese just don’t fucking go together!” he reinforces before he takes a bite of his own pineapple-free pizza choice.

“Mm, and that is where you are very wrong,” she waves a finger at him, mockingly. It makes him laugh, despite his attempts to argue back again, and eventually he rolls her eyes and lets her have her objectively bad pizza in peace.

She grabs their second cider each from the fridge after they finish the pizza, twisting the top off both in the kitchen before she wanders back to the sofa, where Shayne has been flicking through her Switch library.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, when she hands him his drink.

“Find anything?” she asks. She makes a point of sitting back down into the sofa a little aggressively, bumping her hip against him slightly to reinforce her question.

He has found something, and she takes the other controller as they settle into comfortable banter while they co-op a rather intense Indie roguelike that Damien had introduced them to a few months earlier. They do well, for a little while, but a growing string of losses brings Shayne to obvious frustration, and after he huffs and squeezes the controller a little too tight, Courtney reaches over to pull said controller out of his hands.

“Let’s quit the games before you smash my controller with your gym dude muscles, yeah?” she suggests. He grimaces, for a moment, before shrugging and settling back into the couch.

“I get so damn frustrated with games… I don’t even know why, I’ve literally talked to my therapist about it because it’s the only time I ever get really stupid mad and I feel like it’s not exactly good, but she doesn’t think it’s an issue, it’s just like… competitiveness,” he muses.

“I mean, interesting that she thinks that. You get mad with card games and board games and whatever too, though, happens at work sometimes and I know you try to hide it a little more with the cameras but I can tell when you’re becoming a little rage boy inside,” she tells him. Shayne nods slowly.

“Yeah, yeah, it happens then too. Maybe I’m just hyper-competitive but only specifically with games. Which I guess is probably better for me than being competitive about big life stuff,” he tilts his head to the side, looking over to see Courtney shift to cross her legs underneath her on the sofa.

“You’re funny when you get competitive at work, probably why no one calls you out,” she grins, “you checked call time for tomorrow?”

“You know I never check call times.”

“Oh I know, it was a conversational starter not a genuine question. Games shoot at 9, but it’s just a jackbox thing so easy start,” she tells him.

“I should pay you for always subtly telling me my call times, huh?” he jokes.

“I mean… Gotta fund the makeup habit somehow, I won’t decline,” she raises an eyebrow expectantly, and he laughs.

“I saw your insta live the other day, it was a new eyeshadow palette yeah? It looked nice,” he tells her.

“Yeah, it was, thanks- I didn’t see you were watching, you weren’t making stupid comments,” she grins. He shrugs.

“I feel like I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t try and at least understand some of the makeup stuff, and I know you’re good at it- but I was just kinda being quiet at home, wasn’t in a mood to be part of the publicness of it all,” he admits.

“Makes sense, makes sense. I appreciate you trying with the makeup stuff, but I mean, you don’t have to.”

“Need I remind you that you’ve literally agreed to attend a football game with me?” he laughs. Courtney puts on a grimace, groaning slightly.

“Oh no, how did I agree to such a horrid thing,” she mutters, sarcastic, before switching her tone, “no, no, it’s fine, kinda looking forward to seeing you in your full nerding out element. I know all you sports guys think you’re all cool and macho and whatever but you’re literally just nerding out over strategies and stats and math, just the math is about the sport stuff.”

“Hey I fully admit it’s closeted nerdy shit but it’s definitely cool nerdy shit,” Shayne defends.

“And my makeup isn’t?”

“Oh, so is your makeup stuff. And your film stuff, which is where your true nerdery shines,” he teases, Courtney sighing lightly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

“Hey, don’t whatever me, I said it was cool!”

“Okay, okay dude. You wanna indulge one of our nerd things and watch something? I will begrudgingly let you put sport on, or we can find a movie?” she offers, but he shakes his head.

“It may surprise you, but I did actually have a reason for turning up at your place tonight,” he tells her. She grins.

“Oh, it wasn’t just for my fantastic company?”

She expects him to hit her with an insult in return, but instead, she sees his eyes grow nervous as he reaches for his almost-empty cider bottle and starts picking at the corner of the label.

“The company is good too, but like…” he trails off, trying to hide the deep breath he takes and failing miserably, “so like, I had to renegotiate my contract with Goldbergs recently, I know I told you about all that because like yeah they were still calling me a guest star which like… nah, it’s been a few seasons, that’s kinda bullshit.”

“Yeah, that was bullshit, but you got it all sorted yeah?” she prompts, not entirely sure where he’s going.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s all fine, that’s not- so, yeah, since I was talking to my lawyer anyway- and my Dad was talking about adulting and shit last time I was with him too, so it was kind of on my mind, like- and I do have assets and whatever I mean I don’t have a house but I got the car and some of the shit in my apartment isn’t exactly worthless, so-“ he jumps between topics, hesitance clear in his tone.

Courtney can’t work out what he’s actually trying to say, but she smirks lightly anyway as she watches him flounder, letting him keep talking until he does get a little clearer, knowing he’ll get there eventually.

“-so anyway, yeah, I thought I should ask if I should actually have a will or whatever sorted out, and lawyer dude said I probably should, so I ended up doing that too. And I mean, the actual thing was pretty simple, actually, and way easier than I thought it’d be, but there’s all this other legal stuff around it like needing to have a couple of people with power of attorney to execute the will in the off chance it actually needs to be used,” he gets a little closer to the point, Courtney nodding along as she listens intently.

“So, what, you’d be able to use your parents or something, right?” she queries, prompting him to continue, still not entirely sure whether this has anything to do with why he’s at her apartment.

“Well, yeah, my Mum’s going to be one of them, but the lawyer actually recommended that it’d be a decent idea to have the second one be someone else, and maybe someone that actually lives in the same state as me,” he explains, leaking slight humour into his tone. Courtney laughs lightly.

“I guess that makes sense, yeah, it’s not like your parents are exactly close by if god forbid anything did happen… but you don’t have any family in California or anything yeah?”

“I do not,” Shayne confirms, “so like… he suggested I pick a close long-term friend, I guess? And, like, it’s just a limited power of attorney, it just means if I do die or become severely incapacitated they can make decisions around that kind of stuff and to make sure the will is carried out properly, I guess. And I mean, no pressure, but you’re kinda my closest friend I guess and… kinda wondered if maybe you’d be okay with doing it?”

“So you were going to eventually get to your point about why you turned up at my apartment, huh?” she grins, before letting her face settle into seriousness again, “yeah, that’s fine, I can do that for you – I’m guessing I just gotta sign some documents?”

“Yeah, gotta sign it in front of a witness – but that’s fine, we can do that at some point,” Shayne nods, “thanks.”

“No problem, dude. Why you so nervous about asking me to do that, anyway?” she questions, watching him grimace slightly and push further back into the couch as if trying to hide.

“So I kinda expected you to assume I’d go for Damien first, for one, and… I don’t know, I kinda like… I know we’re close, obviously, but like… I kinda second guessed how close we are? I don’t know, I didn’t know if we were ‘giving you legal power over my affairs if something happened’ close, didn’t know if asking would freak you out,” he mumbles his explanation, a little. Courtney smiles softly as she watches his cheeks tinge with red.

“I mean, I can’t say I didn’t wonder why you chose me instead of Damien, but… Of course we’re close, dude. We’re definitely ‘I knew it was you at the door because you’re the only person allowed to turn up here unannounced’ close,” she reminds him, “power of attorney on a will close isn’t much past that, huh?”

“Damien is very difficult to tie to a time to go and sign something with a witness. And also… I dunno. Part of me just trusts you a little more,” Shayne admits, tone turning quiet.

“That’s okay. And I mean… not misplaced trust. I’d definitely take a lot of care to do everything right by you,” he reassures him, and he nods.

“So I guess that makes us literally… I mean, kind of, ‘trust you with my life’ close?” Shayne jokes, and she can hear the thread of nerves returning. She still can’t help but laugh, reaching out with one hand to gently press against his upper arm.

“Definitely. And I mean, we’re ‘you buy my favourite pizza even though you hate it’ close, and ‘I can’t remember the last time we actually cared about who paid’ close…” she trails off, grinning.

“I guess we’re ‘I tell you what I talk to my therapist about’ close too,” he muses.

“Well, apparently we’re ‘I’ve left my journal literally open on the table in front of you for hours’ close, because that is a thing I’ve done tonight,” she agrees. Shayne shrugs.

“I noticed, and I made a point not to look at it, because I didn’t know if you’d noticed.”

“I’m very conscious of where my journal is and who sees that stuff, I usually panic and hide them – the current ones, anyway, the old ones are a free for all because it’s funny, but the current ones – gotta be hidden whenever anyone is here. Except you,” she explains.

“You still journaling a fair bit, yeah?” he asks. Courtney nods.

“Mhm, part of the therapy stuff but also I just… know it works for me. Processing things, but just kind of keeping my mind in order a bit more and making sure things don’t spiral out of control too often…”

“Can I ask what all the coloured tabs are?” he asks, glancing towards the book on the coffee table in front of him before quickly adding, “no pressure if you don’t want to say though.”

“It’s fine, it’s cool – it’s kind of a tracking kind of thing, different colours are for when I write about different subjects or whatever – so I can kinda get an idea of how often certain things come up,” she explains, leaning over him for a minute towards the journal, not quite able to reach far enough to pick it up. “Pass it over?”

He hesitates, feeling mildly invasive for literally touching her journal despite the fact she has asked him to do so, before carefully leaning forward to pick up the book – without reading it, and without disrupting the page it is open on – and handing it over to her. She quickly flips a fabric bookmark into the latest page, before shutting it and turning it so the spine faces down, the colourful tabs facing up.

“That’s an interesting idea, actually – so I guess, like, helps you keep track of things that might be affecting how you’re going more than you think, or something like that?” he prompts.

“Exactly. Like…” she trails off, running her eyes across her tabs, “you can tell when my whole health scare thing was, because green is like body, health, medical, that kinda thing.”

“Mm- I’m glad all that worked out okay. Truly,” he tells her, voice turning soft, and she nods with a soft smile.

“Thanks. Me too.”

“I kinda feel like I need to copy your whole coloured tabs thing for my own use… I don’t journal quite as much as you, and I don’t really do it in the same way as you with writing down what’s on my mind or anything, but… I have been thinking I need to get a better handle on what actually causes me to get randomly extra stressy, and maybe if I started marking things down somewhere where I could see a pattern pretty easy…” he considers, aloud, and she nods.

“It was my therapist’s idea, but yeah, feel free to take it. And I mean, not all of the colours are bad, or like, some of them have good and bad things – like green is when I’m feeling good about health and all that too,” she nods, pausing for a second before she remembers their previous conversation, “and people get colours too – I mean one is work generally, and family is one, and… you got a colour all to yourself. So, yes, I think we’re ‘will power of attorney’ close, given we’re ‘individual colour marker in my journal’ close.”

“I don’t know whether to feel honoured or worried,” he admits, grinning, before softening his features, “you don’t gotta say, but like, if I’m ever doing something that stresses you out or makes things harder for you, please tell me. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.”

“I know. Mostly I write about you being my biggest support,” she tells him, “and later tonight – or tomorrow, since I figure you’re crashing here – I’ll probably write about how this weird extended conversation about how close we are makes me feel safe and secure and valued.”

“I’m glad I can be that for you. I do value you so much, you mean a hell of a lot to me,” he tells her, before glancing at his phone, “and, uh, yeah, is it cool if I crash on your couch? I know I’ve only had two ciders but that, plus I’m tired as hell, don’t really wanna drive home.”

“Oh you are definitely staying here, my dude, no unsafe driving. I’m kinda tired from a long shoot day, I’d be up for crashing kinda soon,” she tells him. A well-timed yawn hits him before he can reply, causing both of them to laugh.

“Yeah, same.”

“Cool. I’ll grab stuff for you,” she tells him, standing up from the couch on wobbly legs and stretching for a moment to get her bearings before she moves to the cupboard in her hallway she uses for spare linen, among other things. For his part, he shifts into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

Courtney grabs a pillow and a blanket, setting them on the couch for him before she wanders back to the bathroom, leaning in the doorway and meeting his eyes in the mirror as he brushes his teeth.

“You know, I don’t know why you even had to be nervous about how close we are – we’re literally close enough that you have a toothbrush at my apartment,” she grins. He flashes her a mouth-open grin in response, mouth full of toothpaste, and she laughs in disgust before shifting into her bedroom to change into something to sleep in.

“You have makeup remover at my place too!” he calls out a few moments later, evidently finished with his teeth. She laughs, finishing changing before she steps out of her room and back over to where he is settling down into the couch, sitting sideways across the seats.

“So why you nervous about how close we are then, hey?” she asks him, leaning against the back of the couch.

“I guess sometimes I just need a little reminder to stop me second-guessing everything,” he shrugs, before glancing up to meet her eyes. She holds his gaze for ten seconds before making a decision, walking slowly around the couch to again reach for her journal. She opens it, flicking to find a certain page.

“I’m giving you explicit permission to read one of my journal entries, if you’d like to. Just the one, it’s a kind of rambling mess one to sum up 2020 and outline what I want from this year. But- if you’d like to, I’m leaving it there for you to read,” she tells him, setting it back down on the coffee table, face-down only so it stays open at the correct page.

“I don’t want to be invasive,” he tells her, but she shakes her head.

“It’s not invasive if I’ve said you can. And I mean, you don’t have to – just, if you’d like to, it’s there. Anyway – I’m gonna finish getting ready for bed and crash. Goodnight, Shayne,” she tells him, walking back around to behind the sofa. She leans forward to place a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.

“Goodnight Court,” he replies, reaching up to place one of his own hands over hers for just a moment before they both let go and she moves to the bathroom to remove her makeup.

Shayne switches off most of the lights in the apartment before settling back onto the couch, a comfortable quietness settling over the space as Courtney moves into the bathroom to go through her own, slightly longer, night-time routine. She removes her makeup, washes her face, and brushes her teeth, all with as little noise as possible to try and avoid distracting or waking Shayne, if by some chance he is already asleep.

She finally moves to her bedroom some time later, flicking off the bathroom light on the way out to leave her bedside lamp as the only illumination in the apartment. She takes hold of her bedroom door handle as she steps through the doorway, pulling the door closed, before pausing to hesitate as she has an internal debate with herself. She glances over towards the couch, only able to vaguely see its back from the doorway, taking a deep breath as she shifts the door back to sit where it was previously, wide open. She glances at it again as she climbs into bed, twisting around amongst her sheets to try and get comfortable.

Shayne, for his part, is quite comfortably lying on his side on the couch, tired eyes fixed on the journal on the coffee table in front of him, barely visible through the darkness. He’d never even considered reading one of her recent journals. That was her private space – he had no desire whatsoever to infringe upon it. But at the same time… why would she have picked a certain entry and left it there if she didn’t want him to read it?

He slips in and out of sleep for a couple hours, until in a moment of sudden waking his curiosity gets the best of him. He sits up, reaching for both the journal and his phone from the table, setting the journal in his lap face-up as he ups the brightness on his phone to give him enough light to read, but not the excessive brightness of the actual flashlight.

Nerves settle in the pit of his stomach as he angles the phone to give the clearest light, occasionally tapping against the screen to stop it dimming again. He feels himself calm, though, as he lets his eyes rake over the words on the first page of the entry. As Courtney had told him, it’s a look back on 2020 that, although it’s quite heavy, covers ground they’ve already talked about. It’s a journey deep into her mind, but it’s one he’s taken with her many times as they’ve sat together in thoughtful conversation.

The entry soon morphs into looking ahead to 2021, and it too starts in territory he knows well – they’d talked with each other about their goals for the new year, too, when they’d caught up a couple of days after New Year.

It’s when Shayne reaches the last section that he feels his heart start racing again, seeing his name scrawled in her familiar handwriting. It’s underlined – a heading. He pauses, not sure whether reading a section about himself would be pushing it too far.

He reminds himself, though, that she told him to read this entry, she chose it with intent, and it did come off a conversation of reassurance that they were indeed very close friends… Shayne squeezes his eyes shut, for a moment, before opening them and beginning to read again.

“Still the most important person in my life,” the note starts, and warmth and affection floods through him as he reads over her couple of sentences reflecting on how much she values their friendship. His brow furrows, though, when he reaches the last sentence:

“It’s been my only unrealised goal for 2 years, so who knows if 2021 will be any different… but my 2021 goal is still to tell him how I feel.”

Shayne blinks stupidly to himself as his mind battles through confusion. How she feels – that usually only means one thing, right? His next anxious thought, however, is that she wants to tell him she feels like they shouldn’t actually be so close.

His eyes drift back up to the start of the small paragraph, rereading her sweet words about him. No, it can’t be that. His hands fiddle with the tabs at the side of the page, for a moment, trying to process, before he realises there is a tab beside is name – pink. His colour. A quick glance at the side of the journal shows him pink appearing more than any other colour by a long way.

He pushes out a long, heavy breath as he switches off his phone and rests both it and the journal back on the coffee table in front of him.

Courtney’s influence is in every part of his life, he knows that. His mannerisms, his habits, his choices of media to consume and the way he expresses his humour all have touches of her. The confirmation that he is placed just as fully in her own life is comforting, in a way, although it makes him ache to be able to pull her into a hug.

And then he remembers that last 2021 goal, and impulsively pushes the blanket off his knees to stand up from the couch. He glances towards her room, expecting to see a closed door reminding him it is now past 1am and he should definitely just go to sleep. This time, much to his surprise, however, the door is wide open. She never leaves the door open – he knows she can’t sleep without it closed. Why would she have left it open?

Shayne stretches a little in place, before hesitantly wandering in the direction of her room. He pauses at the kitchen, hand gripping the edge of her counter as a wave of anxiety hits him with full force. He turns, walking halfway back to his makeshift bed on the couch before he stops. No, she had him read that entry for a reason. She left her bedroom door open for a reason. He takes the confidence of those realisations to push himself to turn again, but confident strides become ever more hesitant until he reaches her door and instead turns into her bathroom as if he’d meant to go there. He sighs deeply, hand rubbing up across his face in frustrating at himself.

“Dammit, Shayne,” he mumbles, steeling his shoulders to again step out of the bathroom.

Shayne intends to knock lightly on her open door, just to see if she’s awake. Instead, he’s met by Courtney standing, a little awkward, just inside her bedroom door. Her hair is messy from sleep, dark circles under her eyes showing her tiredness clearly on her makeup-free face, barely illuminated by the ambient city light leaking through her curtains. He recognises the oversized shirt she’s wearing as one of his own that had gone missing.

When he meets her gaze, he’s again hit with full force, only this time it is with the realisation that he has never seen someone look as beautiful as she does, right there, looking softly back at him. It makes him step forward through the doorway with arms open, pulling her against him in a tight embrace. She holds him just as firmly, and he feels her soft laugh as she presses her head into the crook of his neck.

“Did you read it?” she mumbles.

“Yeah,” he confirms, softly, letting one hand play with the ends of her hair.

“And?” she prompts, voice shaking ever so slightly.

Shayne pulls back, just enough so that he can move his hand to instead cup her jaw, meeting her eyes again as he does.

“I know that completing your goals means a lot to you – and I think you could meet your final 2021 goal early, if you’d like to,” he tells her. He watches her blush slightly in response, although she leans into his hand.

“You’re not going to make it easy for me?” she asks.

“I think you need to do it – but I can make it easier, because I can tell you it will be positive,” he tells her, watching her smile soften as she nods and bites her lip. He fights down his urge to kiss her.

“Shayne, my dude – you are everything to me, and I kinda feel that in more ways than just friendship. So, if you’d ever feel like shifting our friendship into something else… I’d really like that. Because I like you a whole lot,” she tells him, softly. He can’t stop himself from smiling widely as her words settle into his heart. He searches for the right response, but his words fail him, coming up blank.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, instead, voice barely above a whisper. She nods.

Shayne leans forward, capturing her lips with his own. His head spins in unabashed joy as she kisses him back, her soft lips tasting vaguely of minty toothpaste. Her own hand slides up his cheek and into his hair, holding him to her, and it drives him to press a much firmer kiss against her lips before he reluctantly pulls back.

“I take that as… a positive response?” she asks, a little hesitant. Shayne gently directs her head with his hand on her cheek so she again meets his eyes.

“Yes, Court. You’re my everything, too. I like you an almost terrifying amount, but because it’s you, I just feel safe and… happy. I’d really like to be more than friends, too,” he tells her, relishing in the open joy on her face. It makes him continue, “and while I’m being sappy – you, right now, are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

“Shayne,” she mumbles, embarrassed, pressing forward to hide her face against his chest. He wraps both arms around her back in response.

“Just being honest, Court. I really do think you are,” he confirms.

“You’re the cutest, most beautiful boy always, and I am very tired and I’d like you to crash in my bed with me so I can cuddle you all night,” she tells him, slightly muffled against his chest.

“C’mon, then, baby. Let’s go to bed?” he replies. She squeezes him tighter in response to the pet name, before letting go only to take his hand and gently tug him further into her room.

Shayne climbs into Courtney’s bed beside her. They both shuffle around until they find their comfortable position, sharing one pillow and facing each other as Courtney curls against his chest and he wraps his arms around her. He presses a soft kiss against the top of her head, hearing her gentle sigh beneath him before she starts speaking in a sleepy whisper.

“I haven’t technically met that goal – I know I’ve said it before, but the implication is vastly different now, but if I was telling you how I really feel about you-“ she pauses, taking a deep breath, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Court. I’ve been fighting off saying it since I stepped in this room, I didn’t want to be too much too quickly but- I love you a whole lot,” he murmurs.

She doesn’t respond verbally, but she presses a firm kiss against his shoulder where she can reach his skin, before they both settle into comfortable sleep, tangled together in her sheets.

————————————————

Light is filtering in through the curtains in Courtney’s bedroom when they both wake, at roughly the same time, the next morning. It’s the first time Shayne has been in her bedroom this early, and he lets his eyes scan around the soft light as he pushes sleepiness out of his mind. It adds to the total peace he feels with Courtney still pressed against him, head nestled against his chest. His arms are still wrapped around her, too, one hand having moved during the night to end up pressed against her back under her – his – shirt.

“When did you steal my shirt anyway?” he murmurs, to break their soft silence.

“Few months ago. First time I stayed at yours when quarantine lightened up a little,” she mumbles against his chest, in return, “not as good as getting to cuddle you for real though.”

“Mm. I don’t wanna get up,” he agrees, pulling her tighter against him. She doesn’t debate, snuggling up to him with clear intent.

“You’re warm and soft. Big teddy bear but hotter and funnier,” she muses. Shayne can’t help but laugh at her sleepy description.

“You’re so weird. Love you for it, though,” he tells her, and he can hear the nerves in his own tone, although they quickly dissipate with her quick reassurance.

“Love you too, weirdo,” she teases right back. They settle back into comfortable silence as he rubs a gentle pattern against her back, and she traces soft lines against his chest. Her alarm disrupts their peace some ten minutes later, however, sharp tones dragging them both reluctantly away from each other to sit up and face the day.

She pushes him to shower first, wandering out to the living area when he does to retrieve her journal, pushing aside the blankets of what was meant to be his makeshift bed as she twirls the pen between her fingers for a moment, trying to work out how exactly she should put an end to her abruptly interrupted entry from the previous night.

It’s messier than she usually writes in her journal, but she finishes and flips it closed, placing it back on the coffee table before she moves back to start her own morning routine, moving comfortably around Shayne’s own until they are both sitting at her dining table consuming rushed breakfasts. Courtney can feel his gaze on her, at a natural pause in their conversation, and it makes her glance up to see his soft eyes. She can’t describe his gaze as anything other than pure adoration, and it makes her blush and look away, although she knows she’s definitely looked at him the same way before.

“Why you looking at me like that?” she mumbles. He laughs softly in response.

“Because I really goddamn love you, Court. You’re just… everything. I adore you,” he tells her, tone deep with affection.

“So more-than-friends you is… very sweet,” she responds, a little awkwardly, refusing to meet his eyes as she feels his comments settle over her.

“If it’s too much or I’m making you uncomfortable I’ll stop, Court. I don’t want to… push things,” he tells her quickly, concern leaking into his tone, but she quickly shakes her head.

“No, no, you don’t need to stop. I’m just… not used to it. And it kind of makes me want to be very affectionate, and I’m kind of used to holding back some of my affection for you,” she admits, biting her lip as she looks up and meets his eyes again. He nods, in understanding, seemingly pausing as he collects his thoughts.

“I’m used to holding back too, and I guess since everything felt so just… private and us last night, I’ve kind of just thrown that all away entirely, but it’s okay if you haven’t,” he tells her, and she nods.

“I honestly don’t know where my head is at right now, but I just know… I love you, and I’m so fucking happy to know you love me too, and I just want to be close to you. Kinda ten seconds from ending up in your lap,” she admits, in response, watching him grin softly and shift his chair to the side. It’s a silent invitation she happily takes, standing up from her own seat only to sit herself in his lap, arms settling loosely over his shoulders as his circle her waist.

“We gotta go to work soon,” he reminds her, Courtney tilting her head to the side.

“Hey, you’re always late anyway,” she rebuts.

“You’re not, though…”

“Mm, we don’t have to be late, though,” she tells him, before leaning forward to hover close enough to his face to make her intentions clear. He doesn’t make any move to reject, so she continues, pressing her lips against his in a firm kiss he returns with just as much desire. It is her who pushes to deepen it, though, not able to stop herself from smiling slightly into their kiss at the first brush of his tongue against hers.

“Maybe we could do a lot more of this and be late?” Shayne suggests, when they break their kiss briefly to catch their breaths. Courtney laughs lightly before kissing him again, but this time, she keeps the kiss brief.

“As much as I’d like to make out with you all day… nope. We got work, my guy,” she reminds him, shifting off his lap as he puts on a fake pout before also reluctantly standing up from the table, stepping in to wash up from breakfast before she can.

“So… I’m cool to just run with this, whatever it is, but there is the whole issue where… we do work together. And I don’t mind either way if we let this little change in our relationship be obvious at work or not, but I think we need to decide one way or the other,” his tone is cautious as he speaks, but Courtney quickly places herself beside him in the kitchen and reaches for his hand.

“I wouldn’t hate if we defined whatever this is… and I’m not entirely sure I could hold myself back enough to completely hide this at work. Especially today,” Courtney admits, Shayne turning to face her with a soft smile.

“Same. For both of them. So… let’s just let whatever happens, happen at work?” he offers, Courtney nodding in response. She doesn’t speak, though, so he forces himself to continue, “and I- we’re… dating, yeah? Am I your boyfriend? Because I… would like that.”

“Yeah. Damn, I got boyfriend Shayne, how goddamn lucky am I?” she replies, stepping towards him to once again pull him into a hug, “also, yes, that makes me girlfriend Courtney, and yes I have years of pent-up affection that I don’t know what to do with.”

“Honestly wouldn’t even mind if we just fucking cuddled all day at work. Just, like, we can work on the sofa over in the corner right?” Shayne jokes, although Courtney feels the thread of honesty running through it in the way he grips her back.

“We’re filming most of today, actually, so we’re gonna have to like… stay away from each other. But, hey, you want a lift to work?” she offers.

“That’d mean I’d get a lift back here after and inadvertently end up spending another night with you, yeah?” he queries, Courtney grinning.

“Yeah. C’mon, we should be going, like, three minutes ago,” she tells him, poking him in the bicep as she pulls away and goes to collect her things to take to work.

————————————————

They are only five minutes late to work, although a bunch of other people are much later than them – something about particularly bad traffic – so no one really notices, and they move smoothly into the start of their day of shoots. Their initial Quiplash shoot is fun, although uneventful, Courtney and Shayne intentionally placing themselves at opposite sides of the room to each other. They have a silly sketch shoot afterwards, everyone moving into wardrobe to prepare.

“What you giving Courtney heart eyes for, my guy?” Damien asks quietly, nudging Shayne in the side as they both stand a bit behind the cameras while a scene they are not part of shoots. Shayne snaps his gaze to his side, realising he had indeed been letting his mind dive into his affection for her as he watched her chat with a producer.

“I mean I- what?” he replies, voice also low.

“I mean, she’s always looking at you like that, but you usually keep the Courtney mushiness under wraps. She’s going to realise something’s up if she catches you,” Damien reminds him, Shayne nodding and briefly glancing back towards her as he tries to work out how to respond.

“It’s fine,” he settles with, before making a point of moving off to the other side of the cameras to ask a question he already knows the answer to.

Courtney, for her part, ends up in much the same situation. She, Olivia and Kimmy finish their parts of the sketch shoot before the guys, moving to break for lunch together. The boys must finish not long after them, though, and Courtney lets her eyes settle on and follow Shayne as she watches him walk back into the office, laughing with Damien and Kevin.

“Courtney. Hey, Courtney,” Olivia prods her in the shoulder to get her attention, Courtney flinching and pulling away from her in response.

“What?” she asks, annoyed.

“If you keep looking at Shayne like that you won’t be hiding how you feel about him much longer, you know,” Olivia tells her. Courtney grimaces, glancing over at Kimmy to see a raised eyebrow.

“He knows,” she answers, eventually.

“Okay, but do you mean he actually knows or you assume he does because you’re obvious as hell?” Olivia attempts to clarify, but Courtney just shakes her head and resumes eating her lunch.

She keeps her lunch break short, moving back to her desk to flick through emails before the others have a chance to start their lunch, leaving Olivia and Kimmy to stay chatting to them. It’s a move out of panic, more than anything, and when she glances over to see them all laughing she quickly regrets it.

The regret is what drives her to collect her laptop, just as the others start emerging from the breakroom a little while later, and carry it over to the small sofa setup over in the corner of the office. She sets herself up on the right end of the larger couch, back to the rest of the office, propping her laptop on her lap as she returns to working.

Shayne understands what she’s doing, and two minutes later, he sets himself – with his own laptop in tow – down on the left seat of the couch. He glances over to her, and Courtney meets his eyes with a silent request that he quickly accepts as they both shift into the centre of the couch, sides pressing together as they continue to work in silence.

He gives up after a series of aggressive yawns, lifting the laptop off his legs to close it and rest it on the floor beside the wall.

“Didn’t sleep enough last night, huh?” Courtney teases, voice soft so it sits below the hum of chatter around the office.

“Your fault. But yeah. Can I fall asleep on you?” he mumbles back, exhaustion clear in his tone.

Courtney nods, and it is all the signal Shayne needs to shift to lean against her, head settling comfortably against her shoulder as he pushes his shoes off and curls up onto the couch. His hands press at the outside of her thigh, and it causes her to shift her laptop so it rests only on her right leg, taking both of his hands in her left resting on top of her thigh.

Shayne falls into sleep with surprising ease, given where they are, and he’s been out for at least twenty minutes when their quiet couch space is breached by Damien wandering over with his own laptop, taking the armchair opposite the couch.

“He fall asleep on you, huh?” Damien asks, with a sly grin that Courtney has to force herself not to react to.

“Yeah. Didn’t sleep much last night,” she answers, eyes barely leaving her computer screen. She thinks she has succeeded in pushing away the topic, given Damien’s return to silence for two minutes, but she lets out a yawn she can’t quite hold back and he jumps on it.

“How d’you know that? He tell you? Or did you also not get much sleep?” Damien pushes. Courtney sighs.

“We were hanging out playing games and whatever, yeah, he crashed on my couch. So I also didn’t get much sleep, but evidently I can handle it better than him,” she replies.

“You guys spend a lot of nights at each other’s places, huh?” Damien adds.

“I guess so, yeah, but I mean, we both live alone and we live so close, it’s basically just us like… being surrogate housemates or something,” she answers, brushing it off.

“So do you actually crash on each other’s couches, or if I promise I won’t make a big deal about it will you admit you share beds?” he asks, his voice lowered, although Monica and Kevin are half-yelling jokes at each other and drawing the attention of everyone else in the office so it isn’t entirely necessary.

“No, just couches usually,” she reinforces, feeling Shayne wake and press closer against her before she adds, “I’m not exactly hidden with… him things, I know you know. Bed sharing might be pushing that line a little too far.”

“Because deep down you know you’d end up… like you are right now?” Damien prompts. Shayne gently squeezes Courtney’s hand, and she nods.

“I am one hundred percent sure we’d end up cuddling if we shared a bed given that’s the whole reason I slept in your bed last night,” Shayne jumps into the conversation, voice heavy with sleep although with a hint of teasing, “thanks for waking me up, Damien.”

“Wait-“ Damien responds, gasping slightly as he grins and his eyes widen.

Courtney bites her lip, looking down to watch as Shayne shifts so he is sitting more normally, although he remains pressed against her and rejoins his hands with her left after he’s moved.

“I did say usually. Last night… was a little different,” Courtney admits, leaning her own head against his shoulder, “because maybe Shayne knows how I feel about him now.”

“And Courtney knows I feel the same way,” Shayne adds, lifting her left hand up to place a soft kiss against her knuckles.

“So… something happening with you guys now?” Damien asks.

“Yeah. We’re dating. Literally as of like 1am this morning, so… yeah. But we’ve both got years of pent up affection that we suddenly can actually express, and… if I’m going to nap at work why would I not fall asleep on my girlfriend?” Shayne tells him, Damien laughing lightly.

“Happy for you guys.”


	10. Everything Will Be Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little short (by my standards) oneshot inspired by recent Twitch chat obsession over where Shayne might be. But as always, this is fiction. And mostly fluff fiction, because why not?
> 
> Enjoy!

Courtney hopes it isn’t obvious. It’s not like they’re even seeing each other in person at the moment, anyway, given LA is back in a hard lockdown, and she doesn’t text Shayne everyday, so there’s nothing wrong with not texting him at all, right? Plus, there could be any reason she’s conveniently unavailable for every stream he is available for, despite the fact she doesn’t really have much going on besides work given the whole hard lockdown thing…

“Hey Court, I get this weird feeling you’re avoiding me and you’re mad at me and I just want to know why? Did I do something to upset you? Can I fix it somehow?” he texts her, the Saturday morning approximately two weeks after she’d started avoiding him.

“I’m not mad and I’m not avoiding you,” she sends back a few minutes after reading his reply. She isn’t entirely surprised to see the indicator that he is typing appear almost instantly.

“See I don’t buy that… you haven’t texted me in two weeks, you’re never acknowledging me in meetings, you refuse to be on stream with me or film anything in real time with me… I miss you dude. Please tell me what’s wrong?” he responds. Courtney sighs loudly to herself, falling messily back onto her sofa.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m just processing,” she replies, instead, watching his typing notification then frequently appear and disappear back and forth for close to a minute.

“Processing what, Court? I’m confused… I just want to talk to you again, or come hang out or something,” his text reads, when it finally arrives.

She bites her lip, fighting back the hot tears suddenly springing to her eyes as she starts tapping aggressively on her phone screen.

“Fine then. You know what’s wrong? You moved and now everything is going to be different. There’s not going to be a million little excuses to constantly be at each other’s apartments because they’re just so close anyway because now they aren’t. No excuses to drive to work together or get dinner or pick up extra food or play games and crash on couches… I’m never gonna see you anymore and I hate it.” She sniffs loudly to herself when she hits send, feeling the anger crash heavily through her mind. She isn’t sure what she expects him to say, but when he replies, he just seems to be disagreeing.

“Court, I’m still going to want to hang out with you all the time. I still have so many excuses for us to visit each other, we can still get food or play games, and I was going to invite you over today to see my new place and help me work out where to put things because you’re so much better at that than me…” he defends. Courtney isn’t convinced, though, shaking her head to herself as sharp breathing pushes her closer and closer to a panic attack and she types out what she really wants to say.

“It still won’t be the same. I saw you so much it almost felt like we lived together and I don’t think my apartment feels right anymore unless you’re here or at least nearby but that has implications we don’t talk about,” she types, hitting send before she can stop herself and feeling her heart jump into her throat.

“Then let’s talk about them,” his next text is quick. It makes her eyes flash with hot anger again. Why is he putting this on her?

“Don’t make me say it,” she shoots back, fingers trembling as she watches him start typing and continuing doing so for much longer than his other replies. When his long paragraph of a text finally arrives, her eyes widen.

“I’m not. I will. My old apartment never really felt like home unless you were there and I know this new one won’t either without you here, and your apartment always felt like home. I’m still not really that far from you, but even if I was I’d still drive across LA to see you as often as you’d let me because it’s always wherever you are that feels like home. And I really didn’t want to tell you this by text if I ever got the nerve to tell you, but… I know why I feel that, and it’s because I’m in love with you.”

Courtney feels her heart jump, racing even more than it already was as she reads over the message time after time, not sure she can believe what’s in front of her. She doesn’t know what to say, for a minute, but she sees him go to start typing, again, and it pushes her to move on instinct.

“Come over. Or I can come to yours. Now. Then you can tell me in person,” she speed-types, hitting send before he can say anything else. She takes a deep breath, to add a second message, “and I can tell you too.”

She watches his typing notification disappear, for a moment, before it reappears for a much shorter message.

“I’ll be there soon.”

Her heart continues to pound with nerves as she waits for him. She used to know exactly how long it’d take him to get to her place – nine minutes – but she has no idea when to expect him, now. She busies herself by tidying up, or at least putting things on shelves and in drawers and hampers where they kind of belong instead of the floor, something she never does when he’s visiting. She washes her face, trying to remove the evidence of her earlier tears. She’s almost decided to put some makeup on to cover it when she hears a familiar knocking pattern at her door.

“Hey,” he greets her, voice cracking with obvious nerves, when she opens the door. She watches him grimace at his own nerves, before he glances up to meet her with an affectionate smile that makes her heart skip a beat.

“Hey,” she replies, hating the shaking in her own tone as she steps aside to let him in and let the door fall shut again behind him.

They stand in front of each other, for a moment, an awkward two feet apart.

It’s Shayne that moves first, although when he steps forward she does too, letting him pull her into a tight embrace as she opens her arms to wrap around him and hold him against her. He feels him press a barely-there kiss against her temple, and she pushes herself even closer to him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

"Courtney,” he says her name in a tone she’d never heard him use before, deep with affection. With love. She feels tears gathering in her eyes again, although this time, from happiness. They begin to seep from her eyes, spilling onto the skin of his neck when he continues, “I’m so in love with you.”

“I’m in love with you too, Shayne. You’re... everything. You’re just everything to me,” she mumbles against him, the tears evident in her voice.

“Hey, love, why are you crying?” he asks, worried as he pulls back ever so slightly and cups her face in one gentle hand, thumb wiping across her cheek to clear the tears that have fallen. The combination of the pet name and his care makes her cry even more.

“Happiness. Relief,” she tells him, quietly, taking a deep breath to try and settle her emotions as she looks up to meet his eyes. The way he looks at her... it wraps around her and settles in her heart in gentle waves of warm comfort. She leans into his hand on her cheek.

“I want to kiss you,” he admits, quietly, and Courtney can’t stop herself from smiling in response.

“Then kiss me.”

He leans forward, angling his head so their foreheads press together and their noses brush. He’s close enough that she can feel his breath on her lips, but he pauses for a moment, not closing that final distance between them just yet. She lets one of her own hands run up his back and tangle into his hair, but she simply holds, letting him move at his pace. It’s only then that she finally feels his lips press against hers. His lips as ever so slightly chapped, but the way they press against hers is still gentle and soft, a careful brush that is over much too quickly for her liking. She kisses back, with a little more force, but he responds immediately with varying pressure that makes her feel like she’s on fire in the best way possible, every nerve ending in her body filled with gentle energy.

They both break the kiss at the same time, a slow and reluctant pulling back to meet each other’s eyes, both giving nervous smiles paired with certain, affectionate gazes.

“I would like if we could do that... a lot more,” Courtney tells him, tone hesitant as she grips at the back of his shirt. She feels possessive. It worries her a little.

“Be my girlfriend?” he replies, eyes sparkling. She watches his cheeks tinge with red, and she can’t help but lean forward and press another peck against his lips.

“Yes, Shayne. Yes, my beautiful, perfect boy,” she affirms, letting herself sink into his embrace even further. She watches him smile in response, corners of his mouth twitching.

“Feeling possessive, hey?” he teases, lightly. Courtney goes to deny, but he quickly continues, “it’s cute. And it’s right, because I am yours. Only yours.”

“You’re adorable,” she tells him, in response, shifting in his embrace only so she can finally tug him out of the entryway and over to her sofa. They curl against each other on the sofa, and Courtney watches as Shayne takes a deep breath, clearly looking to speak.

“I was upset about moving away from you too. I had to, my new place is larger and brighter and somehow cheaper and I couldn’t continue at the old one anyway, but I am a little bit further from you. And you’re not the only one that let themselves pretend we lived together, I just kind of hoped we could keep doing that, just with a little more travel time,” Shayne admits, and she nods lightly against him in understanding.

“Maybe now, someday we will live together for real. And until then... dating is a permanent excuse to spend time together, right?” she prompts.

“Mhm. And... I think we might accidentally end up living together kind of quickly,” Shayne adds, a little hesitant, but Courtney laughs and quickly agrees.

“Yeah. I don’t want to let go of you.”

“I don’t care where, but can we share a bed tonight? Just so we can cuddle?” he requests, and she nods gently in reply.

“Definitely.”


	11. Five-and-a-Half

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow missed posting this one on this site, although it's been on the other site for a while. 
> 
> Original A/N from there: Not entirely satisfied with how this ends but it's going to be less relevant the longer I leave it, and I do like the premise enough to actually post it, so... Another slightly stream-related fic, but this time in a specific AU setup I haven't seen much of in this fandom!
> 
> Also it's 7000 words again sorry not totally sorry I am not concise

"Hey hey babe, how was stream?" Courtney asks, glancing up from the journal she's been writing in.

"It was fine, I guess," Shayne muses, flitting around their open-plan living area to set down his work things and settle in to the evening, "I'm always so worried about watching those old movies and what racist bullshit is going to come up."

"Much in this one?" she queries, closing her journal to set it down on the coffee table and following him through into their bedroom.

"A bit. An uncomfortable scene with a jeweller," he sighs, shrugging off his jacket to hang up in their closet, "I did manage to look smart by stealing one of your film facts, though."

"Oh?"

"Ian made some joke about a pigeon winning an OSCAR so I dropped that the first OSCARs weren't until 1929 and Wings won best picture," Shayne explains, Courtney laughing lightly.

"Impressive, you do listen to me. Well, I mean, were they impressed?"

"They were. Asked me why I knew it, though..." he trails off, grimacing slightly, following Courtney back out into the living area and settling on the couch beside her, hand reaching out to take hers against her thigh.

"What did you say?" she asks, fingers twisting with his.

"That I wasn't sure, just knew it. We were live after all... Sarah asked me after stream if I knew it because of you, so yeah, admitted I was just stealing your film knowledge. But on camera..." he shrugs, eyes flicking up to the ceiling for a moment as Courtney traces patterns against the back of his hand.

Shayne and Courtney were in somewhat of an odd position. They had met in unusual circumstances, for one: they both auditioned for Smosh the same day and time. Neither had been confident about their audition, but they were much more confident they wanted to see each other more than just their brief conversations before and after the audition, so they exchanged numbers before they left. Shayne texted first – that evening – and asked if she'd like to get dinner the next day. Courtney said yes, of course. He was charming, funny and gorgeous, what more could she want? (Turns out he was a complete sweetheart, intelligent, and showed genuine interest in what she was interested in, too. He really was perfect.)

They hit it off, their first date quickly becoming a weekend together and regular dates from then on. They defined their relationship 3 weeks after they met, and another week later, both got the call: they were in. Smosh wanted both of them.

They had some awkward conversations with HR, but they were cleared to do whatever they liked with their personal lives together as long as it didn't interfere with their jobs. It didn't. They never mentioned their relationship on camera and kept the PDA to an absolute minimum even in the office where at least a good portion of their coworkers knew they were together.

They hit their one-year anniversary together around the same time they hit the same anniversary at Smosh and both had their contracts extended indefinitely. They moved in together another few months later, and adopted a dog together around their two year anniversaries (although the dog didn't cope well with their small apartment and busy schedules, so it was rehomed with Courtney's mother in Utah when they spent Christmas there, approximately two and a half years after they started dating).

Not long after their third anniversary in mid-2018 they decided to upsize their living arrangements and, with some financial help from both their fathers, co-signed a mortgage and purchased their first home. A few months later they found themselves both out of a job as Defy collapsed and took Smosh with it, riding out those dark months of uncertainty leaning on Shayne's Goldbergs money and, emotionally, each other.

When Mythical bought Smosh, their team came back stronger than ever, as did their relationship. They were a given: Shayne and Courtney were together. A package deal, of sorts: each wonderful themselves, but unbeatable together. Where Defy had subtly sustained the pressure to stay quiet, Mythical openly gave them the option of going public. The potential reactions scared them too much, though – Courtney, in particular, couldn't begin to handle the anxiety associated with the idea, even when Shayne was wrapping her in the safety of his embrace – that they chose not to. Instead, they went the other way, playing up how single they supposedly both were on camera, before going home every night to their domestic bliss.

Shayne surprised her with a tropical island vacation for their fourth anniversary. She thanked him wholeheartedly, relaxing into the week of indulgence they spent together despite the fact the proposal she had a sneaking suspicion wasn't too far away never came.

Their TNTL Live tour took up much of the remainder of their 2019 and the start of 2020, until suddenly they were rushing home from Australia in the middle of a global pandemic and going straight into quarantine.

It presented quite the challenge: they were meant to be single. They didn't, as far as the viewers were concerned, live together. How the hell were they both going to film content from home without revealing anything?

They rearranged their furniture, and with some help from their props department and the occasional green screen, managed to turn what had been their office into a fake living room which Shayne pretended was his, and their guest bedroom into his fake bedroom. She took the main living area and their actual bedroom as hers, carefully scanning for anything that looked like his and removing it whenever she did have to film in there. They managed.

They were grateful to have each other through months of isolation and escalating craziness in the world outside, too. Courtney was pretty sure she would've had a mental breakdown without his support, and Shayne's pretty sure he would've gone insane. Instead, they make the most of their time together. They celebrate their fifth anniversary in quarantine, turning their living room into a blanket fort and watching old movies eating takeaway pizza curled up together in the fort. It's perfect.

Smosh starts streaming on Twitch not long after they return to covid-safe in-person filming, and the producers ask if they'll be okay to do it given they're still hiding. They shrug off the concern – they're used to filtering.

And that's how they end up where they are, almost five and a half years together, with their relationship hidden from all but their families, coworkers, and closest friends. There's rumours, of course, but they still publicly – and privately, to some of their friends – maintain that they are both single. It's easier that way. They're fine with filtering.

Except it isn't, and they aren't.

"I know it's fine," Courtney sighs, "I know it was just a random movie fact and maybe you could've said I've talked about it and that'd be fine still because I could've just been bugging you with film facts at work, but..."

"But?" Shayne prompts, hand tightening in hers. They were both aware of the growing frustration with their situation, but they hadn't talked about it for a while.

"It's hard. Having to filter everything I say is tiring. I hate lying so much. I hate saying I'm single, it feels like I'm disrespecting everything we have together. I hate hearing you say you're single. I hate pretending you're just like everyone else in the cast and I'm not in love with you, because you're everything to me..." she trails off, blinking away unexpected tears as her voice catches.

"I know, love. I know. I hate it too. It hurts me so much to pretend I don't love you when I do so much. I wish I could tell everyone how much I care about you, but until both of us are comfortable and ready to think about going public, I guess we need to live with this. And I can do that, even if I don't like it," Shayne's reply is impassioned but gentle, never wanting to pressure her on the issue.

"What if I think I am ready?" Courtney speaks up, voice hesitant. His eyebrows shoot up involuntarily in surprise, not expecting that response.

"Are you sure? I don't want you to feel pressured or do something out of annoyance at the situation unless you are completely comfortable with it, Court. You know I don't mind if we do or not, but I want you to look after yourself first," he replies, cautious.

"I know. It's... yeah, I've always been anxious about it, but I think... some of it is fading or has faded, maybe? I don't think anything people do could actually come between us, I know we're stable and secure and even in the depths of my anxiety I don't see that changing. And I think I'm okay with the idea of us getting a lot of really intense and maybe angry comments online for hiding for so long, as long as I can give myself space when I need it. I think I can just... let it happen, know that people don't really have a right to say anything and I shouldn't take it to heart because it's none of their business. And I don't mean I won't be anxious about it, just, I think I could handle it. As long as you were by my side," she explains, each word careful and considered.

"I'm proud of you, darling. I know it's a big step for you to get to this point – but you're right, we are secure. And we owe them nothing, this is our private life," Shayne reinforces, "but it's okay to still be anxious, and I'm _always_ going to be there to support you. Do you want to actually start talking about how we might do it, or just keep it as an idea for now?"

"Part of me wants to just drop it randomly on stream. Literally could just do it next stream on Friday," she shrugs, shifting closer to lean heavily up against his side.

"Can't really be Friday, anniversary stream is full," Shayne murmurs, a slightly panicked thought at her apparent urgency appearing in his mind. He wraps an arm around her anyway.

"Monday?"

"Damien's birthday. His 30th, too," Shayne muses, tone remaining casual.

"Oh, we definitely can't overshadow that," Courtney agrees.

"I guess we can talk about it closer to the time?" he suggests, and she lets the conversation end there.

————————————————

"She kind of dropped a bomb on me, Dames. She's wanting to go public like... immediately," Shayne sighs, leaning back against his best friend's couch the next evening.

"You've been ready for that for ages though, right? Why is that an issue?" Damien raises an eyebrow, challenging him.

"Yeah, I'm ready, it's not really an issue, it's just... I had this stupid idea for how we could go public, I know she'd think it's hilarious, and it'd mean we could make it a little less serious and fuck with people a little, but I can't exactly tell her my idea and I kinda need a little time..." he explains vaguely.

"Why can't you just tell her?"

"Because it makes something obvious that I really need to keep secret from her," he reinforces.

"Can you tell me what it is? I don't know what to suggest without knowing more," Damien admits.

"I... guess so, yeah. Just, tell absolutely no one ever, okay?" Shayne implores.

"Of course."

"So... you know how she has that recurring start of stream bit about celebrities in her DMs and saying she's taken? I thought it'd be great if she could do one of those, except say she... was engaged. And flash an actual engagement ring. But like, not actually admitting anything about us in that stream, just teasing it. But obviously for that to happen... I need to propose and she needs to say yes," Shayne admits, timidly.

"Oh, damn, yeah, that would be a great bit. But, yeah, I see the issue... were you already planning to propose soon? You've been sitting on that ring for a while, right?" Damien looks pointedly at him.

"I've been trying to find the right time for almost a year. Wanted to on the fourth anniversary trip but I didn't have the ring yet. Almost did it at New Years, but it felt too cliché. Probably literally hundreds of times in quarantine I was thirty seconds from getting the box out of where I've hidden it and just asking her on impulse, but I felt like I needed it to be the right time," he shrugs.

"Then maybe you need to make the right time? I can try and help you hold her off from going public for a little while, but I'm talking weeks here, not months," Damien confirms, Shayne nodding slowly.

"I can do that."

So, with Damien's help, Shayne finds subtle ways to make their reveal impossible for the remainder of the week, and all of the next.

It's his turn to plan their semi-traditional fortnightly Friday night date, that week, and for the first time in a long time he suggests going out.

"Going out where, Shayne? There's a pandemic," Courtney deadpans.

"Oh I know. I was thinking we could still get takeaway, but maybe we can do a nice little picnic thing, pick one of our quite beaches to make use of the end of fall weather before it's really winter? I bet we'd have the beach to ourselves, too," he gives his idea, trying to hype it up a little.

"I'm sold, chill beach picnic sounds nice. I'll leave it on you to work out?"

"Of course," he confirms, and he does just that.

Luck serves them well: the beach they choose is all but empty when they arrive, and the surfers a little way up the beach from where they set up their picnic leave before they are finished their dinner. They chat amicably as they eat, watching the sun start to dip towards the horizon. Shayne suggests they go for a walk along the beach after they finish. He shrugs off his jacket before they start walking, placing it around her shoulders to help beat the chill setting in as the night approaches. They walk in comfortable silence for a few minutes, Courtney quickly seeking out his right hand to take in her left.

"I love you," he breaks the silence as they near a rocky section of the beach, intermittent tidal pools amongst deep red rocks. The tide itself is on its way out, keeping them safely dry.

"I love you too, darling," she tells him, letting him pull them to a stop once they step onto a flat, dry section of the rock. He turns to face her, taking both of her hands lightly in his as he meets her eyes with unashamed affection. They stand in silence for ten seconds, arms swaying slightly between them.

Shayne drops her left hand, reaching forward and into the pocket of his jacket she is wearing – it had been _quite_ the gamble to hand over the jacket, given her penchant for hands in pockets – to pull out the small, flat ring box. He sinks down onto one knee in front of her, flipping the box open as he watches realisation flood her eyes and her free hand fly to her mouth to stifle the gasp he hears anyway.

"Court, I feel the safety and security you were talking about the other day so much. There isn't a version of my future I could imagine where you aren't the most important part. You're the best thing to ever happen to me, you're my favourite everything, and I would love nothing more than to be able to give you my love and support for the rest of time," he speaks, feelings the tears in his own voice but still forcing himself to give the entire speech he'd prepared in his mind, "Courtney Miller – will you marry me?"

"Yes, of course yes," she confirms immediately through her own tears, gasping slightly. She tugs at the hand she is still holding in a clear message and he takes the hint, standing back up only to sink into a tight embrace with her. They hold each other tightly, both crying into the other's hair. He forces himself to pull back after a while, though, once again holding the ring box between them. He slides the ring out of the box and she holds out her hand, eyes locked on the ring and smiling widely with wet cheeks as he gently slides it onto her left ring finger, fitting perfectly in its place.

She gives him a second to shove the empty box in the back pocket of his jeans before she cups his cheeks in both hands and pulls him into a firm kiss. He is more than happy to reciprocate, arms wrapping around her waist to press their bodies together again as they kiss.

"I've been waiting for you to ask since that fourth anniversary trip last year," Courtney admits, when they eventually pull back just enough to be able to walk back towards their car to head home and celebrate in a little more privacy.

"I first wanted to ask then, but I didn't have a ring yet. I have had it for over a year but... I was so indecisive about when, I needed it to be the perfect time because you deserve perfect but I didn't want cliché and then 2020 happened... I almost asked you at least three times every week of quarantine, honestly, but I dunno... Had to make a time, I guess."

"You know I would've been okay with you asking whenever? Like, I was okay to wait until you were ready too, don't get me wrong, but marrying you is just... yes. Of course I want to do that. You're my guy forever, I'm so ready to spend my life with you," she tells him.

"Me too. I'm so in love with you, Court," he tells her, looking over at her affectionately as they reach and climb into their car.

"Does this whole proposing thing at all relate to why you and Damien have both been stalling me around going public?" she asks, halfway home, one hand resting comfortably on his thigh as he drives.

"I mean – as I said, I've been trying to propose forever anyway, but... yeah. I had this idea- if you did that bit you've been doing about celebrities in your DMs, but said you were engaged and flashed an actual engagement ring..." he trails off.

"Oooh, and we could not actually say who I'm engaged to that stream, right? Mess with everyone a little?" she grins, Shayne laughing.

"Exactly. I thought you'd like the idea. And then maybe the stream after or whatever we can actually say we're together?" he finishes out the idea, briefly glancing over to see her nod, "and, yeah, I didn't ask _because_ you suggested going public – but it kind of gave me the kick to actually make myself create a time and ask you finally."

"Perfect," she replies, with a soft smile.

————————————————

"Ten seconds!" Layne calls on their Monday morning stream, counting them in. Courtney and Ian are in the hotseat for the start of the stream, a meme puzzle sitting ready and waiting on the screen in front of them. Damien, Matt and Spencer are sitting over at the Board AF table to their side, and every single person on set – even Ian, despite the fact he's meant to be and is trying to stay straight-faced – is grinning widely at her.

"And I'm just like, George Clooney, for real, stop getting in my DMs, I'm not interested," Courtney complains, as soon as she gets the indication that they're live.

"And I mean he's married!" Ian backs her up, evidently having got his stupid smiling under control.

"Yeah, and I'm engaged," Courtney finishes her complaint, rolling her eyes as she lifts her left hand up into the camera's view, sparkling diamond ring clear on her left ring finger. She quickly shifts topics as she drops her hand down again, "oh, hi everyone! Welcome to our Smosh Games Monday Board AF Twitch Stream!"

They keep the topic on the stream for a while, going over their schedule and the first game they'll be playing for the day, paying no attention to the little bit of drama in the chat. They move their focus – and chat also moves its focus – to Ian's absurd inability to logically complete a puzzle, next, Courtney grabbing the mouse in frustration to take over from him every now and then. They switch over to start their board game after ten-odd minutes of puzzling, Ian and Courtney both standing up from their chairs. Layne signals about another ten seconds before the Board AF intro will actually play, so Courtney leans back down into the camera.

"Oh by the way, yes, I'm engaged for real," she says, grinning at the camera before she moves over to the Board AF table, glancing to their main monitor to see the intro playing. She doesn't mention it again for the duration of the stream, nor does anyone else, but she doesn't make any effort to hide the diamond on her hand either.

Her social media explodes, predictably. She posts a joke tweet about getting fast food (she's not, Shayne had an early finish so he's cooking dinner) not long after the stream ends, but at least three quarters of the comments are asking whether she's actually engaged and to who. She ignores it for the first day and a half, but on Wednesday morning flicking through her phone in a break on set, she considers otherwise.

"Anyone got ideas how I can mess with people again about the whole engagement thing before we reveal later?" she asks, Shayne, Damien and Jackie also waiting around her for their next scene and eating their lunch.

"Just subtly include your ring in a bunch of Instagram stories about something else?" Damien suggests.

"I'm always hesitant to suggest tweets since everyone thinks I ghostwrite your funny ones anyway and I swear I don't but... you could tease a fiancé reveal but just reveal stupid shit that doesn't even slightly identify me?" Shayne suggests.

"Hmmm, they could both work," she muses, flicking to Instagram to add to her story. She starts blatant: a picture of her lunch, with her left hand sitting on the table and her ring just in frame. She goes weirder, next, zooming in on Damien's overgrown hair for a moment before suddenly zooming out to flip him off with her left hand, so the back of the ring is visible. Damien helps her out, posting to his own story a picture of her and Jackie both flipping him off with their left hands – Shayne nowhere to be seen, of course.

She goes for Twitter, next, tweeting out a tease that she'll drop a fiancé fact for every hundred likes, figuring that will get her a few while they're still waiting. The likes come quicker than usual – she should've expected that – and she mixes everyone else around her's suggestions with her own.

"Fiancé has two legs and two arms," she tweets first. Shayne had suggested bipedal, she reminds him that she does not use as many fancy words as him and it has to at least sound like her a little.

"Fiancé converts oxygen into carbon dioxide," is her next, her own idea following on from his.

"Fiancé doesn't like pineapple on pizza," is Damien's contribution, quickly followed by another, "fiancé is assumed human but you can never be sure."

Jackie contributes to "fiancé owns at least one shirt", and Courtney finishes up the last before they have to get back to set with "fiancé has a nice ass 👌🏻"

She doesn't find the time to post any more fiancé facts, but she makes sure to let her left hand fall into every stupid Instagram story she posts. And most of the ones everyone else posts, too.

Their Wednesday Just Chatting stream that afternoon is loosely planned, at best. They have some emote maker competitions, Ian's somehow been given permission to do another puzzle, and they're reviewing memes. There is a plan for their reveal mixed in amongst it all, though, and Courtney is quietly glad – she'd probably be a lot more anxious otherwise. It's exactly why Shayne had pushed for a clear plan on her behalf.

Ian starts off the stream with his puzzle, before Damien and Sarah almost forcibly push him out of the hot seat to do some meme review. There's a variety of memes, but a good chunk are about her ring from the last stream, and they can't exactly avoid them – as they had expected.

"So are you actually engaged, like, in real life, for real, Courtney?" Sarah asks, glancing off to her side where the couple and Ian are waiting in the sofa setup for when they'll actually be on camera.

"Yeaaaaah boys," she calls out, so the mics pick it up, dragging it out and laughing as she finishes. Sarah laughs, too.

"Yes, chat, I do already know that, I was asking for your benefit, okay?" Sarah confirms, glancing back at their screen with chat active, "they really wanna know who it is, Courtney."

"What do you mean? I told them so many fiancé facts on Twitter, should've been able to work it out by now guys," she deadpans, Ian and Shayne laughing along with her this time, too.

"Hey, how about we get started on the first emote maker prompt?" Damien suggests, a few memes later (at Mark Raub's direction), moving them all over to the main setup. Courtney and Sarah are up first for making emotes, given the prompt 'awww'. Sarah goes for bubble text, but Courtney starts attempting to draw a puppy.

"Hey, can I look at your ring?" Shayne asks her, sitting to her left on the sofa partway through their drawings. Ian and Damien start a loud conversation right then – just as planned.

"I dunno why you need to, you bought it," she mumbles quietly, before switching the tablet pen to her right hand and resting her left hand on the arm of the couch beside Shayne.

"Poll is up in the chat! Which emote do you want?" Ian calls out, sufficiently distracting the chat from anything else happening on the off chance what Courtney said was audible on the stream and anyone picked it up. Sarah wins, this time – having to finish the drawing with her right hand had not helped Courtney at all – and they switch out the competition for the second round, now between Shayne and Damien.

"Okay boyyyys, prompt this round is WTF! What the fudge or what the fuck or whatever you want it to be!" Courtney intros them, Ian and Sarah starting to throw out more options for the F as they start drawing.

"What the fridge, which is when you keep going to it every ten minutes to see if there's anything new in it?" Sarah offers.

"What the French horn?" Ian suggests.

Courtney's attention shifts when the second Damien is concentrating down on his own iPad, Shayne hands his to her. She quickly draws an outline of Boneless' lobster hand, before all but throwing the iPad back at Shayne when Damien goes to glance up, although somehow doesn't seem to see her doing so (Damien didn't know about this particular part of their plan). Shayne adds in block letters of 'WTF' beside her lobster hand until it is safe to switch the iPad back. He can draw letters, at least.

When Damien settles back into his drawing and somehow the wider conversation moves on to Takis, Courtney takes the iPad again to add detail and refine the claw so it sticks out the side of the W.

"Poll in the chat! Shayne's boneless WTF or Damien's what the fudge?" Sarah calls out, Courtney quickly handing the iPad off to Shayne again for him to fill with colour.

"What the fudge, since when can Shayne draw?!" Damien exclaims, glancing up at the monitor in front of them to see his attempt.

"Um, rude, of course I can _draw_ ," Shayne scoffs in response.

"I love you dude but no you cannot at all and that looks exactly like a Courtney drawing," he defends, smirking. Courtney gasps, mocking outrage.

"How dare you accuse me of such a thing? Why would I ever assist this complete idiot?"

"Heyyyy! I'm not an idiot. You're dumb," Shayne pouts, looking straight at Courtney. She rolls her eyes.

"Looks like we're supporting cheating here because Shayne ft Courtney is in front!" Ian steps into their argument.

"Ian! Why did you reveal our plans?!" Shayne chastises.

"Oh, now you admit it," Damien metaphorically launches on them, voice emphatic, "chat, you have to live with this! You probably saw it happening and now you know you voted for a couple of _cheaters_?"

He looks aghast for a moment before they all burst out laughing. Courtney and Ian take the iPads for their third and final emote competition, the prompt a reference to their last Friday gaming stream and a weird joke Ian made in Jackbox.

"Hey, Courtney, you wanna give us some more fiancé facts?" Sarah questions, as they draw.

"I got a better idea, how about you all come up with some so I can concentrate on drawing and just say if they're true or false?" she suggests, in counter, the others agreeing.

"Fiancé is at least mostly blonde," Ian starts, Courtney confirming.

"Can we say fiancé is a guy so we can stop saying fiancé instead of he?" Shayne requests.

"Yes, but you could say they. Non-gendered pronouns, guys!" Courtney reminds him.

"Oh, true, true."

"He's got a lot of shoes?" Damien offers.

"True, although way less than me."

"He absolutely hates all sport?" Shayne adds.

"Nope!"

"Well, we know it's not Damien," Ian deadpans.

"Hey! I don't- well, I mean, I don't exactly follow it," Damien admits.

"There's a lot of people here who are not fiancé, actually," Sarah points out.

"Also true!" Courtney confirms, before they pause the questions for a moment to shoutout the poll in the chat between their two emotes, although she hazards a guess they won't actually get to discussing its results. Not that she _actually_ knows how the reveal will happen, just that someone will ask her something that gives her the option to full on identify, and...

"He's an idiot?" Ian starts up their suggestions again.

"For sure," Courtney emphasises, looking back up from her drawing, accepting it is finished and knowing what happens now.

"Heyyyy," Shayne whines, putting on a pout once again.

"Sorry, babe, but it's true," Courtney grins unapologetically as she twists around to briefly face where he's sitting on the cube up behind her.

" _Fine_. Final fiancé fact, then – it's me?" he can't keep up his fake displeasure, instead smiling affectionately as he leans forward to gently rest his hands on her shoulders.

"It is indeed you," Courtney replies, also feeling herself smile a little too much as she rests one of her hands on top of his on her shoulder.

Then Ian immediately cuts to a break.

"What a fucking way to do that," Courtney laughs, knowing they are no longer live as they all stand up. She risks a glance at the screen with chat on it, seeing it full of their names and moving _very_ quickly. She chooses to look away, then, grabbing Shayne's hand in hers and tugging gently to move, instinctively, away from all the cameras.

All of the cast step out of the room for their break, Damien and Sarah both heading to the closest bathrooms as Ian ducks over towards the main office to grab his phone. Shayne and Courtney, for their part, only step slightly out of the studio to find a quiet place where they immediately wrap each other in a tight embrace.

"How you feeling?" Shayne asks softly, head nestled against the side of hers.

"I got a little on edge in the last ten minutes there so I still feel a little residual weirdness there but... relieved, I think?" she replies, her own voice low, "how are you?"

"Yeah, I think relieved. It's... hard to know what happens now. I'm so used to hiding, I don't know how to immediately turn that off," he admits.

"I get that," Courtney replies, reluctantly pulling back ever so slightly and pausing for a moment looking into his eyes. She takes a careful, calming breath, before leaning forward the slight distance between them to press her lips softly against his.

"Is that the first time we've kissed properly at work?" Shayne asks, biting his lip after they pull back a few moments later.

"I think it is. Only took us five and a half years," she replies, letting herself smile affectionately at him.

"Hey hey we going live again soon you two," Ian calls out from somewhere behind them, Shayne and Courtney quickly moving away from each other.

"Oh, right, sor-" Courtney starts.

"No, no, it's fine. Just warning you for time reasons," Ian waves off their concern as they follow him back into the studio.

"So, are we going to just leave it there or let a little more conversation about you guys happen in the second half of the stream?" Damien asks, when they are all back in the studio.

"Keep it to a minimum, but it's probably worth clearing up some of the basic stuff. Like how long we've been hiding for. That'll be an interesting one..." Courtney trails off with a grimace.

"We'll start with me and Sarah for puzzle and meme review anyway, then we can cut back to some couch chat about whatever and throw in a little more on you guys?" Ian suggests, cast and Mark all quickly agreeing as Ian and Sarah quickly move over to be ready in the hotseat. Shayne and Courtney, for their part, sit on the sofa together, although they stay almost as far apart as they usually would in public. Damien takes one of the seats to the side of the sofa, flicking through his phone.

"We have twenty minutes at least before there's a camera on us," Shayne mumbles, five seconds before they're live again, reaching out for Courtney's hand. She gets his message, shifting just close enough that their legs press together and taking his hand in both of hers.

"Hello my puzzle freaks!" Ian calls out, when they're live again, rapidly zooming in and out of the puzzle on the screen in front of them.

"Oh, god, Ian," Sarah chastises him lightly, before laughing as she looks at the barely-started puzzle.

"okay, guys, yes, I gave you quite the abrupt end before the break there – we were at time, though, and I promise Shayne and Courtney will be back on camera later," Ian adds, clearly getting some commentary in the chat.

"We're still here, and we can see what you're saying chat!" Shayne calls out, leaning away from Courtney ever so slightly when he raises his voice for the mics to pick up.

"Yeah, so keep it nice, guys. Unless you're talking about Ian's puzzle skills, because like..." Sarah trails off, Ian taking the topic change enthusiastically. They stick with the puzzle until he's a good 75% completed on it, before switching over to the Discord for more meme reviewing. The other three cast members off camera tune in a little more to the meme review section, throwing in laughs and commentary where appropriate. Shayne and Courtney are still much closer than they'd usually be, thumbs rubbing slow patterns on the back of each other's hands.

"Oooh, interesting!" Sarah pulls up another Courtney engagement meme using a screencap from the previous stream of her flashing her left hand in front of the camera, the text labelling it 2020's biggest plot twist. Bigger than murder hornets, covid, and aliens. Ian and Shayne laugh, but Courtney grins.

"Honestly, I think the engagement isn't even the biggest surprise here, guys..." she teases, voice raised to be picked up in the general mics given she knows her own is not switched on.

"Oh, yeah? What is?" Ian queries.

"We'll get to that after you finish meme reviewing maybe," she brushes off his question, and they do get on with the meme review for another ten minutes.

Courtney and Shayne move apart slightly when everyone does move back to the couch setup, although they let their hands remain together, a quick whispered conversation between them confirming they're both okay with it and that Courtney kind of needs the contact given she's being hit with another wave of anxiety. Damien and Sarah both take the iPads and sit on the chairs beside the sofa to start scrawling some more emote designs – although in a slightly less formal competition and without a prompt this time – and Ian takes one of the cubes up behind the sofa.

"So, you two wanna answer chat questions or what?" Ian asks, Shayne shrugging and glancing to Courtney to let her take the answer.

"Mmm, I can have a look at chat and see – but we'll see. Keep the questions reasonable, hey, guys? We're not answering everything," she reminds the chat, glancing up directly into the camera for a moment as she does. Mark hands another iPad over to her with chat visible, and she scans through it, reluctantly letting go of Shayne's hand so she can rest it in the space between them so they can both read it.

"How long have we been engaged for? A few days," Shayne picks out one of the questions, nodding.

"Mhm. Monday was the first stream since that happened," Courtney confirms.

"I was wondering when you two would end up engaged," Ian muses, from behind them, and Courtney laughs.

"Yeah, and someone did just ask how long we've been together..." she trails off.

"That's going to be the big surprise," Shayne laughs, glancing over to meet Courtney's eyes and confirming they are okay with sharing that. She nods gently, before glancing back vaguely in the direction of the camera.

"Yeah, I first suspected Shayne might be about to ask that-"

"And you weren't wrong, I wanted to ask then," Shayne quickly adds.

"-on a holiday we went on for our fourth anniversary. Which was early last year," Courtney finishes, grinning.

"I met Courtney as Shayne's girlfriend before I joined Smosh," Damien steps into their conversation, casually.

"You were dating already when I joined, yeah?" Sarah confirms.

"We were dating before we joined Smosh, actually," Courtney laughs, finally confirming, "we did meet at the Smosh audition because we auditioned at the same time- and we went on our first date the next day. We defined stuff like a week before we were both offered the job."

"So, yeah, guys, this openness thing is _weird_ because we've literally been hiding this the whole time we've been together for the last five and half years..." Shayne trails off, Courtney nodding in agreement.

"I keep going to panic and yell at everyone to shut up because I'm so used to it being a secret thing," Ian comments, Shayne laughing.

"Yep, I feel that."

"We had to put chat on emote only mode because nightbot was timing everyone out for spamming your names so you're going to have to come up with your own questions to answer," Mark comments, from off camera, Courtney laughing and shaking her head slightly.

"I know, guys, I know. This is a lot."

"Are we gonna mention what's been happening with you guys filming at home in covid times?" Sarah questions, Ian humming in interest from up behind them.

"I guess we can do that. So, uh, we live together, have for- what, three years? No, more than that, we bought a place together almost three years ago and we were living together a bit before that..." Shayne trails off, trying to remember.

"I think it's been a good 4 years," Courtney laughs, "so, yeah, to keep up the hiding thing while filming from home we had to set up a fake second living room in what was our office and like, separate out things so we never had the same things showing up in what was apparently different houses."

"I feel bad for our props and editing department, we got their help and did a fair bit of greenscreening to keep it up but- yeah, had to work that out quite quickly," Shayne shakes his head, "turns out there are complications trying to not hide most of your life but also hide a serious relationship that is part of everything in your life."

"So many complications," Courtney nods.

"Do we wanna talk about why you have hidden things?" Ian asks, Shayne and Courtney both pausing for a moment to silently consult before they do.

"I mean, when we first started at Smosh we'd only been together a little while, we didn't share much about ourselves on camera at all anyway and it would've been kinda weird so we didn't think it was relevant, really," Shayne shrugs.

"And Defy did low key keep a little pressure on us to stay quiet while we were still there, but also, we didn't really want to go public anyway. Privacy is nice. Mythical gave us the option to go public when we started here, but..." Courtney pauses, for a moment, reluctantly reaching to her side to grab Shayne's hand before she continues, "I was kind of an anxious mess over the whole thing. Most of our fans are lovely. Some of the DMs we get are... not. Didn't want to give them more to attack."

"I didn't exactly feel confident about what reaction we'd get if we went public then too. But, yeah, we've kind of... got more okay with it, I guess. And it is a tiny bit harder to hide when there is an engagement ring involved," Shayne smiles lightly, lightening the conversation.

They shift over to talking about the emotes being drawn by Damien and Sarah, then, finding ways to stay away from their relationship as a topic of conversation for almost the entire rest of the stream.

"Claudio occasionally cooks real Italian food and he's making gnocchi – they're pasta not dumplings, Ian, don't even start – tonight so yes I am excited to go home," Sarah muses, when their conversation switches to food and their evening plans as the stream nears its end.

"Oooh, that's fun. I got a whole bag of shrimp in my fridge, so... I got a good food night ahead of me too!" Damien enthuses.

"Do we got plans?" Shayne asks Courtney.

"It's your turn to cook, so, that's on you my guy," she replies, grinning.

"In that case, we're getting takeaway dumplings," he confirms, Courtney laughing lightly in response.

"Okay, yeah, I'll take that. Shayne can cook though, guys, for real. Way more than I can," she nods, "hey, I can spill all your other secrets now."

"Dammit."

"Hey, can I spill you guys' biggest secret?" Ian asks, one minute from the end of their time on stream.

"I think we already took care of the big ones, Ian, I don't think there's anything else left," Shayne hums, glancing in confusion at the camera and then back at their boss.

"I mean the one about you two being soft as hell for each other," he teases, Shayne blushing as Courtney laughs.

"Of course, dude, we've been together forever, kinda in love with each other, we're gonna be like that. But hey, Sarah's super like that about Claudio too. And Noah about his girlfriend. All the others about their partners... It's just you with the cold, dead, heart, dude," Courtney teases him right back, Ian frowning.

"Guess I gotta grow the emo hair back. Hey, guys that's our stream for today!" Ian takes the abrupt ending once again, and they all follow him, waving and saying their goodbyes until Mark indicates they are no longer live.


	12. Restraint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> restraint in the abstract sense, not the concrete. This is very fluff, not smut, and just a short one by my standards. Enjoy.

“But what’s the definition of a primate?” Courtney asks Shayne – she figures he’s most likely to know – as she reaches over to place her hand against his wrist, briefly, just behind his watch. They’re playing a mini trivia card game, midway through a Monday Board AF Twitch stream.

“Monkeys, right?” Ian speaks up.

“Uh, no, not monkeys, monkeys aren’t-“ Shayne cuts himself off, gaze briefly flicking down to his wrist where she had touched it, just for a moment, before looking back across to Courtney, “it’s like gorillas, orangutans, those kind of things.”

They continue on debating the answer to their little trivia question, as to whether anything is bigger than a gorilla. Courtney makes a comment about herself being larger than a silverback, quickly teased by everyone at the table in response as she bursts into laughter. She leans over towards Shayne when he makes a comment right back at her, hand briefly falling to press against his bicep as she continues laughing at his comment.

It’s enough to snap the final thread of restraint he’d been hanging on to as he glances towards her with soft eyes. She meets his gaze, for a split-second, before Ian grabs both of their attention to confirm the group’s answer to the question.

Ify asks the next question, and Courtney immediately makes a joke in response that has Ian leaning forward in laughter and Shayne looking incredulously at her, hand reaching sideways to brush her forearm as he does. They get the question right in the end, ending that round, before they play just one more before their next break. He finds his eyes drifting almost constantly to Courtney, and his own hands grip and brush against her arm in gentle touches every time he says something to her.

“What’s with the touchy stuff, Shayne?” Courtney turns to him, face confused and a little annoyed, both herself and Shayne standing up out of their seats as soon as they enter their second and final break for the stream after the next round. “You don’t want things to be suss – both of us being touchy is going to look pretty damn suss.”

“I know, I just…” Shayne trails off, eyes settling on her, “I just kind of… snapped. I love you. I don’t want to hold myself back.”

“You-“ Courtney starts, face twisting into a smile that she evidently tries to tone down, cheeks tingeing with red as she shakes her head. “You just broke so many of your own rules.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I want those rules anymore,” he answers, shaking his head, “unless you do.”

“Nah. I am okay with you getting touchy on camera and saying you love me in front of people,” Courtney answers, laughing lightly as her own smile spreads and she gives up trying to hold it back, “love you too, Shayne.”

He doesn’t give a response, but he steps towards her, opening his arms slightly with a hopeful smile. She is more than happy to accept, stepping into his embrace as her own arms wrap tightly around him and she hides her face in the side of his neck.

“Love you so much, Courtney. I don’t want to hide that anymore,” he whispers, holding her close against him as she sighs happily and settles into his embrace.

“One minute, everyone!” Layne calls out, from behind camera, and it causes Shayne and Courtney to reluctantly pull back and glance around. No one is paying them much attention, but when Ian returns a few seconds later he throws them each an unopened bottle of water and throws a bag of Sunchips Courtney’s way.

“Thought you might want something,” he comments, Courtney nodding and given him a quiet thanks, before he continues, “so… you’re both going to be touchy even if it’s going to make shippers go crazy?”

“Yeah. And they can just do that. Because I just… yeah,” Shayne answers, gaze sliding across to look affectionately at Courtney against as she sits back into her seat to his side and shoves a chip in her mouth.

“Want some?” she asks, holding them out his way. He shrugs, reaching over and grabbing one from her bag as Layne calls out a ten-second warning, turning back towards the cameras as Ian starts explaining the next game they’ll be playing – Curses, again.

Ian and Ify are targeted by the first few curses as they move around their small group – everyone kind of gets the vibe that it’s a “gang up on Ian” kind of mood, so he gets the most – whereas Shayne gets away with a curse to applaud whenever someone makes an animal noise, and Courtney to make animal noises whenever someone says a food.

Ian sniggers conspiratorially when his turn next comes up, glancing between Shayne and Courtney for a moment before he slides the curse card over to Shayne. Shayne can’t help but laugh when he reads the card, knowing exactly why Ian gave it to him.

“Every time someone presses the buzzer, confess your love for them,” he reads out the card, “I’ve definitely had this one before.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t here then, so-“ Ify speaks, reaching out to slam his hand against the buzzer.

“Hey, Ify, love ya!” Shayne tells him, laughing through his own statement.

Ify is next, pulling his own challenge card and completing it, before pausing to consider who to give his challenge card to. Ian takes the opportunity of the pause in activity to reach out and hit the button himself.

“Love you Daddy Ian!” Shayne jokes, a callback to the most recent crew Try Not To Laugh where their HR, Lisa, had accused him of calling Ian that regularly – he did not, but it was a joke he was happy to take on.

The curse ends up being handed Shayne’s way, but it’s a relatively easy one that he takes in his stride, only relevant at the start of his own turn, so he turns his attention to Courtney as she pulls a challenge and a curse.

“Oh, well, this is absolutely some goddamn déjà vu because I definitely got this card last time we played but I’m going to do it anyway- convince someone to give you $100…” Courtney grins, eyes scanning across the two men opposite her on the table before she shifts pointedly to her side and locks her eyes on Shayne. “hey, Shayne, can I have $100?”

“Why?” he debates back, grinning.

“So I can take my boyfriend on a date, but like, he keeps forgetting to take money places and I keep having to pay,” she explains, Shayne unable to stop his outburst of laughter in response. She isn’t lying. “C’mon, Shayne, just give me $100.”

“I- what if I say no?” he argues, again, although he doesn’t outright say no, and Shayne tries to think back to what the cash he knows is in his pocket actually is.

“Please, just $100?” she turns her eyes pleading, and Shayne tilts his head to the side to watch Ian and Ify shift the buzzer so it sits right in front of her. He looks back to meet her gaze, watching it turn challenging as she hits the buzzer.

“I love you, Courtney,” he tells her, letting his genuine affection for her display in his tone as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out all the cash he has on hand – conveniently, a few twenties. He quickly counts out five, and hands it to her, grinning as everyone at the table laughs.

“Ha, knew I’d get you sometime,” she grins, “although now I’m a little mad because you were wearing those pants at dinner last night when you said you didn’t have any cash on you.”

“He couldn’t have got it between then and now?” Ify offers Shayne’s defence before him, but Courtney quickly shakes her head.

“Nah, we’ve been together the whole time, so…”

“I swear I forgot it was there until just now,” he laughs, “also, I know we’re letting things get suss, but you’re really going for it huh?”

“Oh-“ Courtney starts, eyes going wide, but Shayne shakes his head.

“Nah, it’s fine,” he smiles softly, hand reaching out to take and squeeze hers in a move that is as close to admitting everything as they could get without actually doing so.


	13. Rather Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some kind of quiet request fulfilment for rachelisgroovy on wattpad/discord, coming off the back of yesterday's Damien vs Shayne stream. I wrote, edited and am posting this much quicker than my usual process so excuse any wording errors.
> 
> Also, if you think you know who I am and where I saw the request for this fic, please keep it quiet. But you could always do me a favour and link this update there since I can't do it myself. Thanks!

“Tough break my guy...” Courtney types out, hitting send as soon as the stream flicks over to the end title screen. She closes out of it, then, shifting up out of the couch where she’d been watching from (while sketching away in a notepad, because ADHD) to stretch a little. She isn’t surprised that it’s a few minutes before her text tone sounds out, given they always have a little debrief after their remote streams. She is surprised, though, by the tone of the reply she receives.

“Ugh. Can I come over?” Shayne types out. She furrows her brow, pausing with her thumb hovering over her phone trying to work out whether to acknowledge his strange non-response.

“Sure, see you soon?” she replies, electing not to dive into it - especially if he’s going to be visiting her, anyway.

He doesn’t reply to her text, but he answers the question clearly enough when he rings her doorbell only twenty minutes later. Shayne is twirling his keys around between his fingers when Courtney opens her apartment door, and far from his usual bounding energy, she has to reach out to grab his arm and pull him inside.

“What’s up, Shayney? Something happen?” she asks, watching with hesitance as he fidgets for ten awkward seconds before ambling over to and sinking down into the corner of her sofa. “Do you want to talk, or just want company?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles the first words he’s said since he arrived, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Shayne gives a frustrated sigh - mostly at himself - as he runs his hands over his face in exasperation.

He soon feels the couch cushion sinking beside him, as Courtney places herself firmly in his space. Her leg rests gently against his, her hand settles almost absentmindedly on his bicep, and he almost thinks he can feel the gentle tone of her voice when she speaks again.

“What’s going on, Shayne? A stream thing or work thing? Or something personal?” she asks, eyes watching him closely with deep concern. Her gaze and the hand on his bicep move with him as he begrudgingly shifts to sit upright, leaning back against the couch.

“Stream. It’s... stupid,” he replies, hesitant, his own eyes searching hers for any hint of judgment or teasing that he really isn’t in the mood for.

“Being upset isn’t stupid,” she reminds him, pointedly. He gives a long sigh, gaze falling down to watch himself wring his hands together on his lap.

“Damien and I are just fake competitive but usually the results are kinda even and I can beat him as much as he can me but today I just fucking sucked and it was on stream too and everyone was like- talking down at me about it in the chat and it’s so frustrating and demoralising,” he forces the words out with some aggression, annoyed at himself for even caring. “Sorry. I know it’s a stupid reason to be upset.”

“It’s not stupid, Shayne, you had a bad day at work. And the chat being patronising and whatever is... yeah. Not a good vibe. You’re allowed to be upset, okay? Don’t get mad at yourself for that,” Courtney emphasises, the hand on his bicep shifting from resting to gripping as if backing up her point.

Shayne doesn’t respond, but he does reach over to grab her wrist with a gentle touch and lift her hand away from his bicep. Instead of separating them, however, he turns and leans himself sideways into the gap under her arm. Courtney more than gets the hint, letting the arm he had shifted settle around his shoulders as she taps his thigh with her opposite hand, prompting him to shift his legs up across hers. He bows his head, leaning heavily against the front of her shoulder blade as she wraps her other arm around him to hold him in a comforting hug.

Neither of them say anything else, both comfortable to sit with the silence and their own thoughts. Shayne, for his part, tries to empty his mind of everything but the gentle brightness he feels as she holds him close and he pushes closer to her. One of her hands starts rubbing gentle patterns across his back, and he gives a soft sigh of content.

Courtney’s mind is much more active. She can feel her caring instinct coming through in full force, of course, her heart twinging with discomfort at the sadness and frustration Shayne had let on. It’s what had pushed her to direct him effectively into her lap, to hold him close and protect him from the worries of the world. Her absentminded pattern-tracing on his back begins abstract, swirls in random directions simply trying to give him something to focus on other than whatever thoughts he may be struggling with. Her tracing soon merges, though, and she finds herself drawing hearts across his back. She blushes when she catches herself - she wonders whether he realised. What he’d think. He seems to press closer.

She uses the movement of him closer to her and his curling tighter into himself to drift her hand up between his shoulder blades, skipping over the back of his neck until she reaches the soft ends of his hair. Her fingers start to slide up into his hair and into a repetitive, light stroking pattern.

Shayne feels himself whimper softly when her hand pets across his hair. He feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment but she doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t tease, instead pushing her fingers in a little further. It makes him feel like he’s melting into her in the best way possible, so he stays.

————————————————

Courtney is the first one to interrupt their quiet cuddling on her sofa, although reluctantly, when she hears Shayne’s stomach for the second time in half an hour.

“You want to order dinner?” she asks, voice remaining low.

“Yeah. Can I stay here tonight?” Shayne replies, equally soft and almost timid in his request.

“Course you can, love,” she tells him, immediately wincing internally that she let the pet name slip, although she outwardly tries to pretend it’s nothing, even as Shayne starts shifting slightly to lift his head up and meet her eyes, although the rest of his body remains pressed against her.

“Thank you for everything, Court. I- could not think of anywhere I’d ever rather be than cuddling you,” he tells her with a sincerity that makes her heart flutter. It’s not an explicit admission, per se, but it’s something. It’s something that she mentally grabs onto as she follows her own desire to lean to him and press a kiss against his cheek.

She can feel her own blush when she pulls back, but she can see his just the same, and she feels one of his arms wrap almost cautiously around her waist.

“I don’t want to be anywhere else either,” she tells him, finally, watching as he tries to bite back his responding smile. It makes her smile, too, and soon he is laughing softly as he presses his face back against the front of her shoulder.

“Can I buy you dinner?” he asks, muffled against her.

“Yeah,” she replies, returning her hand to play with his hair until they reluctantly shift apart, just enough for Shayne to reach for his phone and pull up DoorDash. She watches in silence as he taps away and orders his food, letting herself stare.

His brow furrows slightly, but it relaxes when he finds what he’d been looking for. Her eyes drift down - intentionally to the side of his face instead of his mouth, knowing her power to resist her desires for him are running at an all-time low - and she notices the ever so slight stubble at his jawline, barely noticeable in his dark blonde. Her gaze moves quickly over his arm - she’s well aware of the power and strength in his arms and the carefully sculpted muscles - and instead settles on his hand, holding his phone. His hand is almost delicate, long, slender fingers wrapped carefully around the back of the phone. She has an absentminded thought that she’d quite like his hands to hold her just as carefully, or maybe a bit less carefully, and it fills her with embarrassment until she remembers that she’s been holding him like that for hours and his hand around her waist had more than reciprocated.

It’s not just her.

“Ordered. It’ll be here in twenty. Sorry I’ve probably delayed your evening,” Shayne speaks, leaning away from her to set his phone down on the coffee table before he moves back into her arms. He twists to face her more decidedly, one arm returning to her waist as his other hand reaches up to softly grip her own bicep.

“I don’t mind. Worth it,” she answers, breaking his gaze for a moment as she feels a rush of nerves hit her at full force.

“Courtney?” he murmurs, gently. He’d seen the sudden change in her eyes before she looked away and heard the waver in the last two words she’d spoken.

“Hm?” she answers, still looking elsewhere. He bites his lip for a moment before he answers, silently settling into the concern for her that washes over him.

“What’s making you anxious?” He asks. She twists her face into an almost sarcastic smile.

“You can read me so easily,” she doesn’t answer his question, but her tone isn’t displeased or uncomfortable, it’s... curious. Content.

“Damien might be my best friend, Court, but you’re...” Shayne trails off, taking a deep breath. “You’re something else. Something more. You’re so important to me.”

Her hands around him turn into gentle grips, bunching his shirt in her hands. He presses closer to her, as much as he can while still holding her gaze when it flicks back to his.

“I’m anxious because...” she starts, the shaking in her voice clear. He gives an encouraging smile. “My best friend has been curled against me in my lap for more than two hours and now he’s subtly hinting I’m not just a best friend to him and I’m fighting my own desire to kiss him and tell him I’m in love with him.”

“Courtney-“ Shayne says her name immediately, instinctively, and with all the care and reverence and warmth he feels. He lets himself give into his own desires, hand shifting off her bicep to cup her cheek as he leans his forehead against hers. “I’m in love with you too, Courtney. I love you so much.”

“That’s convenient,” she mumbles, with a breathless happiness. They’re so close he can feel her speaking as much as hear and it sends a rush of happiness through him that explodes into warmth and content the second her lips are on his.

He kisses her back, a gentle kiss that still confirms how deep both of their feelings go. Courtney takes a deep breath, when they reluctantly pull back, mentally settling into what’s happened, processing the way he’s softly holding her cheek.

“You think this was going to happen when you came over upset about work?” Courtney asks, lightly. She watches the corners of his eyes crinkle with his soft laugh.

“No, but- I’m glad it has. It was a long time coming. I’ve wanted to tell you for a really long time,” he answers, Courtney nodding silently in agreement. They both almost jump when the doorbell rings, snapped out of their close embrace by the arrival of their food. They move to her small dining table to eat their dinner, but their legs rest against each other under the table and Courtney shyly reaches out a hand to him, fingers entwining with his when he reaches out a hand to meet hers.

“Would you- like to be my girlfriend?” he asks, eyes shifting from their entwined hands back up to meet hers, before his tone turns worried, “-if labels are a kind of thing you go for but it’s okay if you don’t-“

“Shayne,” she cuts him off, sternly, “yes. I’d really like to be your girlfriend. And I want to be able to call you my boyfriend.”

“Yeah. Please do- I’m yours,” he replies, messily. She gives him an affectionate smile in response, though, and he lets it settle his sudden worry. It settles him into content, peace and happiness as their conversation shifts into light banter as they eat their dinner, while their free hands remain wrapped together.


	14. First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found a few complete oneshots I've never got around to posting in my fic folder last night, so... May as well post some of them, hey?
> 
> A few disclaimers at the top of this one: for one, please remember this story is entirely fictional and features characters, not representations of any real people. Also, virginity is a bullshit social construct.
> 
> Content warning for sex mentions but no explicit content (and, in my usual style… it’s mostly fluff). Onto the fic!

Shayne and Courtney hadn’t directly planned to end up at her house after their on-location shoot not far from hers, but they’d been throwing jokes back and forth at each other all day and it just kind of happened.

“C’mon, hang out, I’ll beat your ass at Switch something,” she’d suggested, Shayne shrugging in acceptance and driving the familiar route to her house just behind her. She did manage to beat his ass at everything they tried playing, before flicking open DoorDash and asking for his suggestion on a dinner order. They return to their usual aimless banter while they wait, and while they eat, moving back to settle on the couch flicking through their respective Instagram feeds afterwards.

“Are you actually a virgin?” Courtney breaks the comfortable silence between them, leaning back into the couch and turning slightly to face him with vague interest after a random Instagram post prompted the thought. As much as her tone is free of judgment, he scrunches his face up and refuses to meet her eyes. It prompts her to continue, “like, if it’s not something you’re cool talking about that’s fine, no pressure no judgment. Just something you joke about a lot and I wonder. Plus I saw a post about that kinda thing.”

“Do you think I’m not?” he turns the question back on her, tensing a little.

“Not sure, haven’t really thought about it. Like, you joke that you are and you are introverted and shy and reserved when it comes down to it- but I know you were in that very long term relationship and you’ve dated a bit since. And you’re certainly not unattractive,” she answers, tone remaining light and comforting. He takes a long, deep breath to settle himself before he answers.

“I… am, for real, yeah,” Shayne admits.

“Can I ask why? Like, conscious decision on your part kind of thing?” she queries again, and Shayne finally meets her eyes as he shakes his head.

“Not exactly. Wasn’t really dating as a teenager because I was too busy balancing working and school, then I was with Bianca for almost six years and she was a wait until marriage person so… yeah. Since then… I dunno, I’ve been on dates as you know, but I don’t think I’m a hook up on the first date kind of person anyway and…” he trails off, hesitating for a moment before he continues, “I honestly didn’t care about it all, but that one girl I was seeing for like two months, that ended because she wasn’t cool with me being a virgin and being kinda awkward and unconfident around all that kinda thing.”

“Oh my dude that is so shitty of her, sorry you had to deal with such a shit reason for ending things… all makes a lot of sense, though, just hasn’t happened?” she replies, empathetically, and Shayne nods.

“I don’t think we really worked anyway so I dodged a bullet there, but… didn’t feel great at the time. But yeah, it’s all just circumstance,” he affirms, shrugging it off.

“How much have you done, if you don’t mind me asking?” Courtney continues, before turning a little more teasing, “you seen or touched boobs?”

He wants to resist the question for a moment, but he meets her eyes and all he sees is support and interest. It makes him realise he kind of wants to talk about this stuff. And she is his best friend, after all.

“I have seen and touched boobs, yes. I mean, you and Olivia have both flashed me so you know I’ve seen… but yeah, in a dating context. That’s as far as I’ve got,” he answers her, watching carefully as she laughs at the reminder of the flashing, before she nods in understanding.

“Other than that shitty girl- do you have a problem with it? How do you feel about it all?” she asks, pushing the topic a little deeper. Shayne pauses to collect his thoughts before he answers.

“I’m not really sure. I don’t… like, for the most part I just accept it’s whatever and don’t think much of it. There is the occasional niggling thought that it’s secretly because there’s something wrong with me and it’s definitely come up with my therapist once or twice but… these days it’s more kind of, the older I get the more it’s just kind of… annoying. Just, kinda want to get the losing virginity thing over with before I’m thirty. Which is… getting close,” he admits.

“I guess that makes sense, yeah. It’s definitely not something wrong with you, though, dude, you’re killing it in so many ways and you’re a great person and any girl would be lucky to have you, okay?” Courtney reinforces. He can feel himself blushing at the compliment, and he mumbles a ‘thank you’ in response while looking down at his lap and fiddling with a thread on his jeans.

“Can I turn the questioning back on you? I mean, I know you’re not, you’ve said enough…” he queries, glancing back up at her, and she nods her approval.

“Yeah. Lost it at 17. Wasn’t exactly the best experience, but I consented and the dude wasn’t not trying but it was kinda forgettable,” she laughs it off, and Shayne nods.

“I’ve heard that a few times…”

“I mean, I’ve definitely had better since. Mostly only slept with guys I’ve actually been dating, only a couple one-off things, like five total. Since I know you wanted to ask that but were being a scared idiot,” she turns the teasing back on him, and he laughs lightly in response.

“I mean, don’t want to push you and be too nosy if you don’t want to talk about stuff, but yeah, it interests me,” he admits with a shrug, “not in a weird way, just like… we’re friends. Friends talk about this stuff. Right?”

“I get what you mean, don’t worry. And yeah, I don’t mind talking about it, pretty open about this stuff honestly,” she reassures him, shrugging.

“When did you last? I haven’t heard you talk about dating anyone for a while,” he comments.

“It’s been a while by my standards. Like… almost a year, I think? Oh, god, I hadn’t realised it’d got that long,” Courtney laughs at herself, “not ashamed to admit I like having sex, so, yeah, don’t love this long without it.”

“That’s valid. If it’s something important to you then… yeah, a year is a while,” he agrees.

“D’you think it’d be something important to you? Even just in a relationship context?” she turns the question back on him.

“I mean…” Shayne trails off, organising thoughts and sighing lightly before he continues, “I’m not asexual, I know that. It’s definitely something I’ve wanted with specific people at times and I definitely get generally… horny, I guess. So, maybe, yeah? It’s hard to know.”

“So all the getting off jokes to deal with being horny aren’t totally faked, huh?” she offers, teasing.

“Yeah, although depending what’s causing it, doesn’t always work,” he admits, with half an awkward laugh.

“Ooooh, Shanye got it bad for someone do ya?” she pushes him, grin wide as she watches him blush and laugh again, clearly embarrassed.

“Maybe there is someone in my life I keep fantasising about,” he tells her, and she latches onto it for a moment, teasing laughter and pokes to his shoulder until he cringes so hard he curls up on himself and hides his face down against his chest.

“Awww Shayne my guy, it’s okay, nothing to be embarrassed about, c’mon,” she settles down, voice calm and caring as she wraps a hand around as much of his bicep as she can and tugs to try and get him to relax and sit up properly again.

He does, after a moment, untwisting himself and leaning back against the couch with an exasperated sigh as he stares up at the ceiling. She can tell he’s trying to formulate something to say, so she stays quiet.

“I’m almost getting to the point where just for the sake of getting it done, I’d be tempted to pay a sex worker. At least then it’d probably be good… but I dunno. Virginity is a bullshit concept, but I’m kind of an anxious, shy mess about the whole thing when it comes down to it so kind of want first time to be with someone I know and trust not to make fun of me,” he admits, gaze not leaving the ceiling.

“That makes a lot of sense. I mean, nothing wrong with paying someone, that could work, but I’m sure you could find someone willing otherwise, too. Maybe even the girl you fantasise about,” she turns teasing again, and he meets her eyes with an embarrassed grimace as he makes his hand into a fist and lightly presses against her shoulder in a feigned punch.

He ends the conversation there, bringing up something from work for the five minutes before he reluctantly peels himself off her couch and tells her he should go home, given it’s getting late.

“Okay. Thanks for hanging out, my guy, we should do this again soon,” she tells him, with a nod. It had been a while since they’d done the chill hangout thing, and it was nice.

“Yeah, for sure. Thanks for not teasing me too much with the whole DNM thing,” he responds, a little awkwardly, and she smiles.

“Of course, dude. Very much here for you if you ever want to talk about anything at all, mmkay?”

He nods in acceptance and returns the sentiment, pulling her into a loose hug before he says goodbye and steps out of her apartment door.

————————————————

“Hey hey stupid, want to come over tonight and hang out?” He wanders up to her at work a week later. She tilts her head to the side to the moment, considering and thinking through what she had planned to do after work.

“Gotta do a couple things at mine straight after work, but they should be quick, I can come over after that,” Courtney confirms, and he gives an eager smile in response, telling her he’s going to find a game he can beat her ass at this time.

He isn’t exactly wrong. He buys pizza for dinner, since she covered their dinner last time, and after they eat they settle onto his couch with a string of PS4 games that he does very much win. After a while, he leans forward to leave his controller on the coffee table and switch off the TV. She leans forward to discard her own controller in response, twisting to sideways facing him on the couch.

“You know our little convo last week?” She starts, after a moment of comfortable silence. He turns to her and nods, so she continues, “don’t take this weirdly, it doesn’t have to mean anything – but if you wanted your first time to be with someone you know and trust, I’d be okay to help you out there.”

“I’m not following,” he tells her, clear confusion in his eyes as they meet hers.

“I mean that I’d have sex with you. You could lose it to me, if that was something you’d be interested in. No pressure, of course, and if it’s totally weird you can pretend I never said anything,” she answers, trying to smile through the slight blush she can feel on her face as she watches his eyes cycle through realisation, surprise and embarrassment before they squint in concern.

“I don’t want to just… use you for that,” he responds, a little awkward, “like, don’t feel like you have to do anything for me or something just because we are close.”

“I don’t think I have to. Wouldn’t exactly hate ending my dry spell either, y’know, you’d be helping me out too. And it’s not like I’d offer this to anyone, I’m offering because I want to help you out, okay?” she reassures him, and she watches Shayne nod as his cheeks turn ever-redder.

“I… don’t dislike the idea. Like I said, kinda nervous as fuck about it all, might be shit at it, but I feel like you wouldn’t be an ass about that and I could trust you to guide me through it a little,” he admits, and Courtney nods, reaching out to grip one of his fidgeting hands in hers.

“Of course, Shayne. Not going to judge you for anything, and I’d be there to make you feel comfortable and okay about it, yeah? Don’t have to be perfect and confident and whatever the first time. That’s what practice is for,” she tells him, clear and reassuring. He nods, rapidly trying to process. It’s kind of surreal, but at the same time, it doesn’t totally surprise him that she offered.

“When would you want to… actually do that?” He asks, watching her grin as he implies he’s fully on board with the idea. Her grin is infectious and he feels his own smile growing.

“I mean, if you want to plan a time, we could. Or I could just randomly hit on you sometime without warning and go from there. Or it could be now. Up to you, my guy,” she tells him, and he nods, biting his lip to hold back the answer that came to him with more immediacy than he expected.

“I mean…” he trails off, laughing awkwardly at himself as he fidgets and looks away from her again, “now?”

“For sure. Stop me at any point, okay, Shayne? If you change your mind that’s totally okay. But if you want to, then… now works,” she tells him. He glances back down to meet her eyes with clear arousal and a continuing flush to his cheeks as he nods in acceptance. She takes it as consent to shift herself to sit in his lap, both of their arms instinctively settling around waists and shoulders.

Part of him expects it to feel forced, given the almost clinical build-up, but they end up in a progression that seems perfectly natural and instinctual. His anxiety rears its head at a couple of points, but she notices, careful and reassuring words – and touches – bringing him back to reality and comfort. He even finds a space of confidence, eventually, although a slightly adjacent set of worries seep into his mind when she steps out of his bedroom for a moment after they finish.

What now? If she was a girlfriend, he’d ask her to stay over, but she isn’t. She’s just a friend helping him out, but he kind of wants her to stay over and he kinda wants to talk and to make sure it was okay for her too and-

She returns to his side on the bed a couple of minutes later, hands wrapping around his arm as she lies on her side facing him.

“Do you want me to stay?” She asks. He nods, too embarrassed to say it out loud. She makes it easy for him, though: she doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t tease, instead simply nudging him to shift the covers so they can both slide under them. They don’t cuddle up to each other, but they lie close and entwine their hands together.

“How you feeling about all of it? Okay?” she asks him, caution evident in her tone.

“More than okay. It was… really good. I’m glad I did this with you, too, actually felt kinda comfortable. Thank you,” he admits, watching her smile softly in response.

She leans closer, hand reaching up to tilt his head ever so slightly to press a kiss against his cheek. It’s different, closer to a friendly peck than the hot and heavy making out of earlier, but it still makes his cheeks flush with red.

“Was it okay for you?” he asks, concern leaking into his own voice. He’d tried, truly, because he didn’t want it to be just for him, and-

“It was really good, my guy, don’t worry. Good way to end my drought. And I’m glad I could do this for you and help you feel comfortable, too,” she tells him, reassuring and honest. He settles into returning her soft smile and they let the conversation end there, instead mumbling about something they have to do at work the next day until they both fall into restful sleep.

They wake up wrapped around each other, but they don’t make a big deal out of it, instead extricating themselves to shower and get ready for the day. She borrows one of his shirts to wear and figures she’ll raid makeup at work for her face. She chooses a merch shirt of his that he also owns, so it isn’t recognisably not hers – just, it’s two sizes bigger than she’d usually wear. She does do oversized sometimes though, and no one says anything, so it’s fine.

————————————————

They continue not to make a big deal about it: for all intents and purposes, nothing changes, although it has both of them feeling a little more confident and relaxed for their own reasons. They don’t mention it again, they don’t reference it at work - although Shayne quietly stops making virgin jokes about himself - and neither of them bring it up when they next hang out alone, this time at her place, six days after it happens. She tries to teach him something on her keyboard, and he completely fails, instead hitting discordant melodies and making jokes that send her into fits of laughter.

Shayne has an equally banter-filled time when he catches up with Damien another couple of days later. It’s been a while for them, between Damien’s stream nights and all their other commitments with work and the like, but they set aside Sunday evening as best friend time to catch up and play some shit. Their conversation stays pretty light while they face each other in a couple of PS4 games, debating an anime series Shayne liked that Damien was still hesitant on, but after dinner they turn a little more serious.

“You had much going on in your personal life lately, Shayne?” Damien asks, after an extensive conversation about Damien’s own feeble attempts at dating and a disagreement he had with his sister. Shayne debates internally for a moment. He kind of wants to talk about it, but…

“I dunno, what is there to my personal life anyway?” He laughs, noncommittally.

“I mean, you still a lonely single virgin?” Damien jokes, and Shayne cringes, knowing he’s going to take the chance.

“Still very single, no longer a virgin,” he answers, watching his friend’s eyebrows raise almost comically in surprise.

“Wait, wait, wait, what? When did this happen? Have I been that bad of a friend that I missed you dating someone for a while?” He queries, jumping between almost excited questions.

“Slow down, slow down. It happened about a week ago, and it was just a one off thing with a… friend. Not a dating thing,” Shayne explains cautiously, watching confusion etched across Damien’s face.

“One off with someone you aren’t dating doesn’t sound like you, dude.”

“I know. But it just kind of… fell into place.”

“What’s that mean? You wanna tell me what actually happened since you clearly want to talk about this, or you going to keep it private?” Damien shoots back, mildly teasing, and he shrugs.

“Yeah, kinda want to talk about it. Um… So, yeah, friend asked me if I was actually a virgin since I joke about it so much and we had a little DNM about it a couple weeks ago. Admitted I kind of wanted to get it over with but also was kind of nervous about it so maybe somehow with someone I trust? Caught up with her again last week, and she offered to help me out and she also wanted to end a dry spell so it kinda worked for both of us and… yeah. Was comfortable it’d be okay with her and she wouldn’t judge me about anything so I took the offer and it happened then,” Shayne explains, awkwardly skirting around the detail.

“Were you comfortable with it all?” Damien asks, voice turning a little more understanding. Shayne nods.

“Yeah, definitely. She was understanding and caring about it all and because I was comfortable with her I didn’t feel totally stupid and anxious and could kinda get a little confident about it all, so… yeah. I’m glad it was with her,” he admits.

“That’s great, dude, I’m happy for you. How’s the friendship with this girl pulled up after it?” Damien redirects the questioning, a little, although not saying anything abought the girl’s identity.

“I mean, pretty much nothing’s changed, we’re as chill as ever and I’ve hung out with her since and it wasn’t even mentioned,” he answers, leaving out the more complicated part of his answer.

“Really, nothing changed at all? No simmering feelings or desires to do it again?” Damien pushes, hitting right on Shayne’s problem.

“I maybe… had some definite feelings for her beforehand and sleeping with her definitely didn’t make those weaker,” Shayne admits, “I think she really was just helping out a friend, though. I don’t think there’s anything there, so I just gotta leave it, I think. Not going to cross any boundaries.”

“Is this a friend I know? Because last time I knew you had a thing for someone…” he trails off, pointedly.

He doesn’t answer for a second, glancing up at the ceiling before letting out a long sigh.

“It was… Courtney, yeah. I slept with Courtney.”

“Geez, Shayne, so maybe had some feelings for her is an understatement. Of all the girls you could end up losing it to…”

“I know. But I mean, even putting aside that yeah I’ve had a thing for her forever… I’m glad it was her because I do trust her a whole lot and she’s just generally so understanding and caring. I know you like teasing us about being a fake couple, but I do have something special with her just platonic friendship wise that I don’t really have elsewhere. My friendship with her has always been… different. Getting close is just what we do, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Ah, yes, your friendship is different. Because you both have feelings for each other,” Damien points out, but Shayne merely sighs.

“I don’t see anything from her, though.”

“She asked you to have sex. Is that not _something_?”

“She was just helping me out as a friend, dude. She told me it didn’t have to mean anything.”

“Doesn’t have to doesn’t mean it can’t. And I swear, Shayne, maybe she said that, maybe she accepted helping you out as a friend is all she gets – but she’s somewhere having this conversation with someone too,” Damien implores him, before changing tact when Shayne doesn’t respond, “without getting too explicit, can I ask what you actually did?”

“What do you mean?” he pushes back.

“Like, was it just the minimum necessary for sex and that’s it? Foreplay? Pet names? What happened after?” he clarifies, “but like, keep the detail as low as you want.”

“I guess… it wasn’t the minimum, no. Quite a lot of foreplay. Lot of making out. She called me baby a couple times, but mostly we just used actual names which… holy hell. Yeah. After it was… just kinda it, but she stayed over and we woke up cuddled together although we didn’t go to sleep like that. And didn’t acknowledge it,” he explains, watching Damien nod in understanding.

“I guess that could go either way… the cuddling and the real names does make me wonder, though. I just… she looks at you differently to anyone else, okay? Obviously I can’t force you to say anything, but I know how much she means to you and I wouldn’t tell you I think it’s returned if I didn’t really believe it, okay? One day you gotta talk to her. Maybe even more now that you have slept with her,” he encourages him, and Shayne sighs.

“I guess. I kinda feel bad she doesn’t know I do see her that way given we did… yeah. But I just… what if I lose what I have with her already? I’m not sure I could take not having her in my life somehow,” he admits, vulnerable, watching Damien tilt his head to the side and smile gently.

“I think you and Court could survive that anyway, even if she didn’t see you that way. But I think the bigger question is what if by not talking to her you miss out on more with her? I know you don’t just want a casual thing with her, you want something serious and long-term – what if you could have that, if you did talk to her?” he points out, Shayne merely giving a shaky sigh in response.

————————————————

“Hey, can I come over tonight?” Shayne wanders up to Courtney the following afternoon, trying to keep the nerves out of his tone. She eyes him suspiciously, though, concern evident on her face.

“Course, you okay?” she asks carefully. He shrugs.

“I’m good, don’t worry. Just want to hang out,” he tells her, and it’s not entirely a lie. She accepts it, but she reaches out and squeezes his hand for a moment first. He knows he blushes in response, so he turns to step away from her and return to Damien’s side so they can go over the script for a video they’re doing together.

His evening at Courtney’s starts as most of their hangouts do. They talk aimlessly about work and she shows him tiktoks while they eat dinner he purchased, and afterwards they gravitate to her couch. He hits a wall of uncertainty when they do, though, and it’s only a few seconds before he feels her twisting sideways to face him and taking one of his hands in hers.

“You wanna talk about whatever’s making you nervous, Shayne? You know I’m always here to listen,” she tells him, gently. He sighs, but he doesn’t say anything, and it prompts her to continue, “you know I’m not going to judge you or react negatively to anything you say to me my guy, okay?”

“I know. I’m just… scared,” he mutters, still not meeting her eyes. She moves closer until her knees are pressing against the outside of his thigh and he tries to concentrate on the contact instead of the lump in his throat and racing of his heart.

“That’s okay. But… I’m here for you,” Courtney tells him, voice soft, before she continues hesitantly, “is it about… us sleeping together?”

“…Yeah, kind of,” Shayne admits, with another rough sigh. He gives himself another five seconds before he finally turns his head and meets her eyes. He can barely hear himself over his heart thumping. He presses on. “So, I, um- I know it was just a… friends helping each other out thing. That’s… yeah, fine, I know it didn’t mean anything else for you but I- I kinda maybe…”

His attempt to actually say something falls flat, and he gives an exasperated sigh at himself as he tips his head back and lets his gaze fly to the ceiling again.

“But you…?” she prompts, voice hesitant, and it makes him bring a hand to run up his face and back into his hair.

“Okay clearly I’m terrified to say this because you mean a whole lot to me and I’m scared I’ll lose you over it but-” he speaks with more force, this time, although she quickly cuts him off.

“You’re not going to lose me. You mean a lot to me too.”

“You say that, but-“ he starts again, hesitance returning to his voice.

“Shayne,” she says his name with an intensity and depth he hasn’t heard before. It makes his eyes snap to meet hers again, and he watches as they turn stormy with an emotion he doesn’t quite recognise in her. “I think I know what you’re trying to say. And I promise I won’t react negatively. But I need you to say it.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath, too, hands tightening around his. He doesn’t want to read into it too much, but he swears he finally recognises the emotion in her gaze and-

He has to fucking speak.

“I’m kind of feeling guilty I didn’t say something before we slept together, because I… kind of have a whole lot of feelings for you. The romantic kind. And sleeping with you hasn’t exactly made those go away. I didn’t… want to tell you because I expect anything, I just, I feel like I took advantage of your offer in a way you didn’t know and I should have told you at least in case you weren’t okay with it and I just… I’m sorry.”

Her eyes stay fixed on his while he speaks, and he watches as they settle from storming emotion and uncertainty to calmness and care. She drops his hand, and his heart sinks, until she pushes closer and lifts her arms up to loop around his neck.

“I don’t think I would’ve offered if I didn’t have a thing for you too. And I did truly offer as a friend that wanted to help you out, I wasn’t trying to get anything out of it for me, but… I got a whole lot of feelings for you too, Shayne,” she replies, softly, and he feels a stupid grin spreading across his face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she confirms.

He takes it as the signal to wrap his own arms around her waist, tugging her closer. It’s an awkward angle, but she leans forward and presses her lips against the corner of his lips.

“Does this… mean something for us?” Shayne asks, hesitance leaking back into his tone, “I want it to.”

“I’d like that. You wanna be my boyfriend?” she asks. He nods quickly in acceptance, pausing for a moment before he follows his desire to press a gentle kiss against her lips. It causes her hands to shift from around his neck to cup his cheeks, softly gripping his face to immediately pull him into a deeper kiss.

“I love how we’re being shy and cautious when we’ve literally had sex,” she mumbles when they pull back. It causes Shayne to laugh and gently twist her around to sit over his lap. He doesn’t push further, though, instead pulling her into a tight embrace and pressing his face against her shoulder. One of her hands slips up to slide into his hair when she returns the embrace, fingers gently playing with his blonde strands. It makes him murmur quietly in contentment, settling into her hold and the happiness spreading through his being in response.

“For the record, I’ve had a thing for you for quite a while,” he admits with half a laugh when they eventually pull back just enough to comfortably meet each other’s eyes.

“I have for you too… Damn, if one of us had said something us sleeping together might’ve happened under slightly more dating circumstances,” Courtney jokes, and Shayne shrugs.

“Maybe, but… this is cool too. I’d always take a closer relationship with you, but even if it had just been a friends thing I’d still be grateful you offered that because… Yeah, I want you anyway, but there’s always been something different with us and I always feel comfortable and safe with you. And maybe Damien was right with his constant insistence that it was different because we were both into each other but-“ Shayne cuts himself off, grinning lightly and watching her soft smile.

“I’m glad you feel that with me because I always have with you too, baby, whatever the reason,” Courtney nods.

“I like when you call me that,” he murmurs, shy, and her smile turns teasing.

“It was an accident the other week, but it suited the context and you didn’t complain, so I just went with it. Now it’s very intentional.”

He doesn’t reply to that, instead pulling her into a soft, gentle kiss.


End file.
